All the Time in the World
by Anonmew
Summary: A story about Akihiko, Shinji, and Miki growing up in the Kawatani Orphanage. Contains drama, foreshadowing, some humor, and a very dorky kid Aki. :p Complete.
1. Chapter 1

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><strong>**Thank you, and please enjoy n_n**

۞

For as long as either of them could remember, from the time he was a toddler and she was an infant, they were given shelter and cared for by the Kawatani Orphanage.

It was a quaint orphanage. It was small, but homely, inhabited by a number of homeless children from Iwatodai, each of them listed in a different faction and granted a different caretaker. They mingled with one another, yes; they all ate in the same places, played in the same places, and attended the same schools. But they answered to a different adult. It ensured the quality care of the children, and prevented stretching anyone too thin.

Akihiko and Miki had grown up knowing nothing else. The leader of their faction was a young man in his late twenties or so - he was a black-brunette, with deep, stern-looking brown eyes and a relatively tall build. His name was Satoru, but more often than not, the children in the faction called him Sato-san. The two siblings both referred to him as such, but when mentioning him outside of his presence, he was almost always known as Chichi.

Alongside Satoru, there was one child who had spent nearly his whole life growing up in the orphanage, who was the eldest member of the faction and assisted with the care of the younger members. Natsuo was his name. He, too, was a black-brunette, but boasted expressive hazel eyes in contrast to his older counterpart, and was much younger, being in his teens. His younger status made him more influential to the childern in the faction - some of them were more inclined to follow Natsuo by example rather than listen to their self-proclaimed parent. And, on the flip side, Natsuo served as the voice of the faction to Satoru.

The system was well-thought out, and life there was peaceful. The children had a roof over their heads, and they often had two or three meals a day, even if they were unsubstantial meals of warm milk and bread, and often soup. Some of the children were miserable. Others were grateful for what they had. Still others were numbed to the world by their trauma, and the remaining few were plainly happy. They grew up this way.

Akihiko and Miki, orphaned siblings without a clue about life before, were the latter.

Their lives were mundane and simple. They woke up from seven to eight in the mornings, and ate breakfast. On some days, they had to stay inside of the orphanage due to weather, like rain or thunderstorms; most others, they were allowed out, and they spent the majority of their time outdoors. There, they would play a countless number of games, from tag to hide and seek, to kite-flying and fishing. If it wasn't cold, they would swim in the nearby river for which the orphanage was named. And after a long day of playing, they would come back home, eat dinner, and fall asleep in the bedroom assigned to their faction, which they shared with six other children, by nine o' clock.

On less carefree days, the orphanage would necessitate that the children help clean the building. Anyone old enough to pick up a broom or a washrag was required to help with the cleaning - those days were spent scrubbing floors, mirrors, and making quick trips back and forth from the orphanage and the river where they gathered bucketfuls of water. On those days, they took a break mid-day and ate lunch, though it was often a quick meal of very little food in exchange for all the work they did. Regardless, most everyone did their fair share, and the chores were done in record timing, with time for evening play before bed.

Most important to the siblings' lives, however, was the existence of their other. Knowing no family aside from each other, they stuck together like glue, and did next to everything together. You did not see Akihiko without Miki, or vice versa. If you did, chances were that something was gravely wrong - Satoru quickly learned that any time one returned to the orphanage without the other, someone was in serious trouble.

The day in question was exemplary of that.

"Sato-san!" The younger of them burst into the orphanage, her eyes rimmed with red, her hands flailing in a panic. "Nii-chan, nii-chan!"

The black-brunette had been reclined in the sleeping room for his faction - most of the children stayed out of it during the day, and so he used it as a peaceful break room during the very rare occasions where there were no other duties to attend to - when he heard the female's wailing. At it, he jumped up immediately, wired to borderline neuroticism in the face of a crisis after several years of dealing with orphaned children. "W-What? What's wrong, Miki?" When she only sobbed harder and pointed frantically out the door of the building, he crouched near her and touched a hand to her shoulder. "Miki, I need you to calm down and tell me what's going on."

"Akinii-chan!" She was on the verge of hyperventilating, something that the adult was trying to calm as she enacted her explanation with dramatic hand gestures. "He fell, and, and, blood! Help!" Satoru swore under his breath and darted back into the sleeping room, from which he grabbed one of the small emergency first aid kits. The little silver-locked girl stayed bouncing in her place in a frenzy; when the older male stepped back out of the room, he took her hand in his much larger one and the two of them darted off toward the site of the accident. _God, not another one-_

"Akinii! Akinii!" Miki broke her hand away from Satoru's grip when they neared the area. He could spot the slightly older boy not too far away; she ran up to his side and collapsed next to him, her small hands grabbing at the thin set of clothes that covered his worn body. But the boy, aside from bleeding excessively from one of his temples, looked fine, albeit a bit dazed. At his sister's frantic grabbing, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her closer, trying to speak over her crying.

"Okay! It's not bad, just a little cut! Miki, okay-"

Satoru snorted when crouching near them. _Little cut._ All right, well, it was pretty small given that Miki was screaming bloody murder over it, but no 'small cut' bled this profusely. "Stay still, Aki. We need to stop the bleeding before you faint."

The boy did as he was told. Although it was apparent by the shock on his face that he was just as surprised as Miki, he handled it much more calmly than his little sister. That was typical. He was more subdued than his younger counterpart. "What caused this?" The male began to question as he applied a firm hand to the injury, his first attempt to stop the flow while he fished out the proper supplies. Akihiko informed him that they had just been playing by the riverbed when he slipped and managed to hit his head on one of the jutting rocks there; Satoru had told them time and time again to be careful when playing in the area, but this had been the first instance of either one of them getting hurt."How many times have I told you- hey. Look at me for a second." The child met Satoru's eyes, which studied his face. "...All right, it doesn't look like you got a concussion."

"Akinii okay?" Miki turned away from crying into her brother's shoulder, sorely rubbing an arm across her tear-soaked face. "He gonna die?"

"Hah," Satoru smiled and shook his head. "No. He's fine. You two just need to be more careful when you run around on the riverbed, okay? He could have been hurt worse."

"Yay!" The girl was returned to her usual bouncy demeanor the next instant, as quickly as if the crisis never happened. Satoru had to tell her to calm down once or twice so that he could finish actually patching the injury, pressing onto it a white, square bandage to pad it and protect it from any invading infection. "Akinii's okay!"

...He was relieved.

Not but a few days ago, one of the children that the orphanage picked up years back - around the same time Akihiko and Miki both came into their custody - had passed away. He was slightly older than both siblings, but they had grown up being closer acquaintances in comparison to their relationship with the rest of the children in their faction, and Satoru had been worried that the loss might have driven Akihiko to recklessness. Did he think it was unlikely? Well, yes. But the child in question, only a few years older than Akihiko, had taken his own life. He had been too young to know it was wrong - it might even have been an accident. But it wasn't unusual for particularly traumatized children in the orphanage to attempt suicide, although they were often, admittedly, much older, and it was just as likely that the drastic act was sometimes emulated by other children.

But Akihiko was fine. In fact, the loss hadn't shaken either of them very much. They were sad, of course, but Miki hadn't shed more than a few tears, and here she was with Akihiko, sobbing like the end of the world was coming when all he had was a cut.

"It's getting late, anyway. You should both come back for dinner."

"Aw!" They both whined at this. Akihiko staggered a little from vertigo when rising back to his feet, but shooed away Satoru's impulsive attempts to help him keep balance in his moment of defiance. "No! We wanna play!"

"Hey. I told you to be careful around the riverbed, and you got hurt anyway. You can come back a little earlier tonight. " He resisted smiling at their pouting faces, "Look at the bright side; you'll get first pick of dinner! At least pretend to look happy!"

Well, Miki had no need for pretending. She was all cheered up again.

۞

They were both seated in the enclosed dining room, which was known to be a starkly empty room outside of the kitchen area padded only by a swath of cushions for the children to seat themselves at. Miki and Akihiko both reclined on a cushion each and watched Satoru as he disappeared into the kitchen to retrieve their meals.

"Akinii," Miki pushed her kinsman's shoulder, pointing to a figure seated alone in the corner of the room. He looked up, his platinum eyes transfixed there. "Who?"

Satoru returned before Akihiko could find words to respond with. Both children returned their eyes to their foster parent, who set down a bowl large enough to fit two or three cups of soup in it accompanied by a glass of milk for each of them. He noticed that the two children had taken notice of the newcomer, however, and swiftly used this as an excuse to introduce the young boy. "Why don't you come on over, Shinjiro?"

The boy, whose disheveled locks veiled his brunneous gaze, said nothing.

Miki nor Akihiko budged from their places. While both were talkative amongst each other - Miki especially - they were both equally shy when it came to other children, and refused to move an inch in the strange boy's direction.

"Come on, you two. You can go over and say hi."

The female started to fidget with her hands, inclined to obey Satoru's commands slightly moreso than Akihiko was. She caved once to nursing at her glass of milk, afterwards standing and grabbing hold of her brother's sleeve to keep him near her for support. Both of them wandered over with utmost caution, with Miki's gaze locked onto her feet.

"Shin-ji-ro-san," She mumbled almost mutely beneath her breath. She afterwards chose the easiest expression of his name and spoke slightly louder, "Hi, Shin-san."

The brunette still didn't budge, but did glance up, slipping his bangs from his eyes.

"He's the latest addition to our faction, you two. Make him feel at home."

The silver-locked female made a brief, thoughtful noise, and bounded back away at that prompting; Akihiko, then, found himself close to the male, although was stiffly quiet while observing the unfamiliar boy. Satoru sighed, figuring that was to be expected. They were both far too cripplingly shy around the other children. Being the older of the two, Akihiko might have been the slightest bit more comfortable interacting with strangers, but he was even less talkative than his sister by default.

Satoru watched this anxious weaving that Akihiko committed when approaching, his platinum eyes always fixed deliberately on the brunette, watching his every movement. That stopped after a minute. He reached the corner in which Shinjiro was situated and paused to brace himself. "...Hello, Shinji-san." He held out a timid hand.

The strange boy who was slightly larger than himself finally moved, though it was to push himself further in the corner he had chosen to occupy. Akihiko faltered and stepped back, confused by the brunette's rejection of his advances.

"Now, Shinji." The only adult in the vicinity stepped up. "It's all right. They're only trying to be friendly. Why don't you open up to them a little?"

The brunette hugged himself closer, his face softening slightly from its glare. "...Hi."

Miki returned about that time, holding the bowl of soup she had been given by Satoru. In her efforts toward making a friendly gesture, she set the bowl down between herself and Shinji, pushing it gently forward to him. "Hungry?"

Shinji swallowed and looked from the food to the small girl. Satoru frowned; he wasn't usually allowed to give more than one bowl of soup to each child, but Miki still needed to eat. He almost considered giving the bowl back to her, but the little brunette sat up straight afterwards and began to consume the soup without use of a utensil as Miki had forgotten to bring it as well. Both siblings watched with relative wonder as the boy pried food from the concoction with his fingers and then picked up the bowl to press it against his lips, swallowing the broth in ravenous gulps with no heed to manners.

Satoru pitied the boy, really. He, like some others they had received before, had been picked up off the streets. He didn't know what happened to his parents. He had been living on his own with limited assistance from some older females who were in the area - the promise of food and a place to sleep had been sufficient to coax him from the rundown area of Iwatodai he was in and to the Kawatani orphanage. Most kids as young as him would have already died on the streets. They were lucky to rescue him.

The brunette declined coming with the siblings when they offered to let him sit with them, so they both departed back to their original place, sharing Akihiko's soup between the two of them in compensation for Miki's sacrifice. They did steal glances at the brunette from time to time, but the shyness of all three children sufficed to prevent them from interacting any more than what meager exchanges they already had.

۞

The following few days, both Satoru and Natsuo kept watch over the newest addition. Shinji, like many of the other children already present there, tended to keep to himself; he slept in his own specific corner of the sleeping room, ate by himself, and wandered around the premises in his free time. Without motivation to go 'make friends', Shinji took an explicit interest in the kitchen.

Riyeko, the orphanage's female cook, tried several times to shoo him out. "It's not mealtime. Go and play with the other children."

But if there was anything Shinji had a problem doing, it was obeying.

He wasn't an obnoxious kid, no. On the contrary, he was usually polite and noticeably quiet - not to say he was softspoken, because when he talked it was for a reason, and you heard him. But regardless of the many times he was persistently ushered out the kitchen, he turned right around walked back inside. Unlike other children, he didn't ask for food, nor did he try and steal it off the counter. He just lingered inoffensively and watched Riyeko work with the food she had to ready for that evening's dinner.

It became routine for the week following his adoption into the orphanage. He would wake up, follow through the habitual teeth-brushing and head-counting, follow the rest of his faction into the dining room for breakfast, and then slipped into the kitchen just after to meander around and look at all the ingredients that Riyeko must have used to prepare their food. She would arrive not long after, make sure that he hadn't snuck any ingredients - which he never did, who could tell why? - and then proceed with making lunch, which he would watch and assist with as much as he could by transporting goods and observing, perching on one of the few stools inside so that he was high enough to see. When she left the kitchen, he would, too, and linger around just outside of the orphanage building, always on his own; he came back inside to eat lunch, then returned to the kitchen before dinner, following this schedule until he was put to bed for the night.

It was that way that Shinji just so happened to befriend the residential cook before he got to know any of his fellow children in the orphanage.

Eventually Riyeko refused to continue letting him use the kitchen as an excuse to hide away from the other children. Once she had finished preparing that evening's dinner in a slow-cooking pot, that day being almost a week after Shinji's first arrival, she topped the dish with a lid and departed the kitchen while taking the brunette's hand to lead him outside.

"I still have to clean up and put back the ingredients," The dark-brunette had told him. "You go and meet some new friends, all right?"

He wasn't very inclined to the idea. He felt misplaced around other children his age, and tended to avoid them regardless of how friendly they were. So he redirected his footsteps toward the wooded area from which the Kawatani river flowed out toward the ocean; he preferred the isolation of the forest and had a penchant for climbing.

Stepping around the first few trees that marked the entrance of the woods, the brunette weaved his way around the lower-hanging branches, sticking close to the riverbed as the foliage there was softer against his sore and calloused feet. Most of the children kept out of this area - the youngest of them were sternly advised against wandering out of sight of the building, while the older children and teenagers either stuck near the river or, contrastly, wandered off to the nearby Iwatodai to entertain themselves. But, just his luck, the forest wasn't quite absent today. He had only walked twenty or so steps into the woods when he heard someone yelling from a distance further in.

He approached the voice. Why? Maybe out of curiosity, or because he empathized with the fear that was so apparent there. But when he got close enough to distinguish the voice, the words, he picked up pace and started to run through the tangle of trees in search of the girl who he so swiftly recognized as the same one that had greeted him days ago.

"Akinii! Aki-!" Her shouts were cut off by the gradual snap of wood.

Shinji began to call back to her at that point in his concern. Was she trapped? Was she hurt? She kept calling, and so he found her before long; it was the silver-haired girl from before, as he suspected, and she had somehow found her way up into a tree. She was thereupon left clinging helplessly to a sagging branch that was slowly but surely giving way underneath her weight, crying helplessly for her brother.

Shouting up at her to stay still, the brunette assessed the tree. It couldn't be very hard to climb if the girl, who was younger than him, could accomplish it; he quickly spotted the means by which she did in the form of a dead branch that had already broken off and was lying diagonal against the ground, still limply attached to the trunk. Scaling it with considerable effort, he edged his way around onto the branch that the girl occupied, not thinking that their conjoined weight would only worsen the issue.

While his attentions were focused on touching his hand to the one that the girl outstretched towards him, a step or two onto the branch sufficed to completely break it. She screamed. Shinji gritted his teeth and vaulted backwards against the remaining stub of the branch just wide enough to support him when he collapsed against it, and he squeezed his grip on the girl's hand for all it was worth in his effort to avoid dropping her. The brunette was hardly conscious of the approaching footsteps over the wild drumming of his heart on top of the wailing of the girl he held with a rapidly weakening grip. He shut his eyes against the strain he enforced on his entire body, his breathing taut and forced.

"Miki!" The voice broke through to him that time. The weight of the girl diminished rapidly in that single instant, and when Shinji popped his eyes back open, he could see that the girl's brother had finally arrived underneath her to grab hold of her dangling ankles, thus relieving the brunette of some of her weight. Both siblings looked up at him and his precarious position against the tree; he was kneeled over on it, the bark scratching at the front of his body through the flimsy set of clothes he wore and was in as much risk of falling off as the girl he had endeavored to save was. In addition, she wasn't safely grounded yet.

Shinji realized that submitting the girl to her brother would be her best path to safety at this point. He released her hand; she squealed and only squeezed him tighter.

"Let go," He commanded her gruffly.

She swallowed and looked up at him, but did as she was told. Whether it was because she believed him or because she was too weak to hold on any longer, he didn't know, but in the end she was okay - Shinji watched with a smile of amusement as the entirety of her weight fell down on top of her brother, who frantically scrambled for a grip on her, only to collapse beneath her weight and leave them both in a pile among the cushioning leaves.

Once assessing that her brother was okay, the girl degenerated into a fit of giggles, which were deemably contagious for her brother picked up on it a just after. Shinji, meanwhile, scrabbled for a hold on the tree he was stranded on, managing to bring himself to a woozy stand and holding his body closely to the trunk while he caught his breath and waited for his shaking legs to stabilize underneath him. She was okay. He wasn't sure why, but knowing that did make him sort of happy. He didn't want to see her get hurt.

He made his way back around the weaving branches so absent of leaves at this time of year, and Shinji carefully tread his way down the convenient half-broken branch that had made scaling up the tree so easy. He was met with a tackling hug that knocked the breath out of him, conjoined with a plethora of cheering. "Yayyy, Shin-chan!"

"Miki, careful," Her older brother was close on her heels, bringing his view back up to the brunette who was standing uncomfortably still against the girl's affection. The two boys met made eye contact, and the slightly younger of them bowed his head. "...Thank you."

The brunette remained quiet. He glanced down to the girl, Miki, who released him, but bounced in place and swayed with a hold on one of his hands. "Why you up there?"

"Hide and seek." The girl giggled again, "Play with us!"

Shinji stopped. Hide and seek? He had never heard of it.

"Oh, I'm Akihiko," The brother extended a hand toward him, which Shinji paused momentarily before taking. Watching their palms meet, the brunette took note of how tan he was in comparison to the silver-maned boy, who's skin was much fairer, until they released hands and Akihiko gestured to his younger counterpart. "My sister, Miki."

He tried to smile a little. "I'm... Shinjiro."


	2. Chapter 2

So it was that Shinji became acquainted with the Sanada siblings. Because he had saved her that day, Miki immediately deemed him worthy of her praise and cheer, breaking down the shy barrier that existed between her and all the other children; Akihiko accustomed himself to the brunette just as well, while Shinji returned his own rough, awkward, albeit well-meant friendship. He was different from what they were used to. Getting to know him, they both realized that he hadn't been taught the first thing about etiquette, didn't understand some of the day-to-day words that they had known, and learned that he was more of a loner type than either of them were. Even so, he stuck with them. He still left their company to wander into the kitchen from time to time, which Riyeko grew to welcome and made use of whatever he could do to help, but it became that he was enlisted as a friend of the Sanadas and was often seen with them.

He quickly adopted playing their games with them, and he taught them how to - efficiently, and thus avoid an issue like the one that brought them together - climb trees. Even being no more than a month older than Akihiko, he was often seen as a big brother figure to both siblings who was constantly trying to look out for them. Miki, then, became pampered between the two males. The two siblings had always been closely attached, but Miki and her infectious happiness, her cheer and outgoing, inquisitive nature, quickly grew on Shinji, and he regarded her with just as much protectiveness as her older brother.

But the sad day came where they were forced apart. Three years later, both boys had grown to the age of six, whereas Miki remained five, a year behind them. The two males she had grown so reliant upon were enlisted and forced off to school.

Natsuo, in eighth grade himself that year, had helped Akihiko and Shinji each pack their own backpacks full of whatever supplies they could dig up from the orphanage. That mainly consisted of a few pencils, an eraser each, a few folders, and a pack of lined paper; whatever else they needed would surely be supplied by the school. Shinji, though he had familiarized himself with the orphanage, was more calm about leaving it for the day to attend a public setting. But Akihiko, who had next to never left the orphanage's premises, was just as terrified and panic-striken as his hysterical sister.

"I don't want him to go!" Miki complained in sobbing to Natsuo, who was typically in charge of getting the newest children in his faction safely off to school for the first time.

"But he has to go," The black-brunette tried to explain. "All children go to school when they're old enough. They meet new people, and start learning."

He tried to stand up, but she grabbed his sleeve. "Why can't I go?"

"You're not old enough yet, Miki."

Akihiko lingered in the corner of the room with his backpack, his eyes downcast on the new set of shoes that were received by the orphanage from the school. He had been dressed appropriately in the uniform dress, something that was... odd for him, considering he had grown up mostly wearing a set of clothes that were old, worn, and often too large for him. These were pristine and fit him well; a neat white shirt, over which he was told to wear this short-sleeved black jacket, with black shorts and uniform shoes. Getting so many things was an odd, almost bizarre experience for him, not wholly pleasant or unpleasant. But the thought of being taken from Miki was enough in itself to put him in a state of silent disarray.

But above all, it hurt him to see Miki so upset.

"I promise everything will be okay. He'll be back this evening." He heard Natsuo's words vaguely behind him as he departed the room past Shinji, who glanced after him, but remained lingering in his place. Akihiko beelined for the sleeping room that he had been in just thirty minutes ago; once there, he made his way over to the bed that he and his little sister shared, still mildly warm from their presence there earlier. Unable to think of any other means of consolance, he pulled the blanket from the bed and ran back into the entrance hall where he had been, his backpack and supplies rattling behind him as he moved, and made his way up to his precious sister whom he wanted nothing more than to see happy.

"Don't be sad, Miki," He smiled and held out the blanket toward her. She sniffled and took hold of it, at first unsure, but afterwards spreading it with her fingers and hugging it against herself. The boy pried one end of it from her fingers to wrap it around her shoulders and better comfort her within its warm confines. "Smile for me?"

"I don't want you to go." She parroted her earlier words, refusing to meet his eyes.

"I'll bring something back for you," He offered hopefully.

Miki still looked up, unhappy, but seeing the concern on her brother's face made her feel like she had to smile. She stepped forward to close the short distance between them and hugged him, an action he quickly reciprocated.

When she released him and stepped back, her whole body enrobed in the blanket he had gotten, brushed gently by her shoulder-length platinum hair, she frowned and held up a hand from which she extended her pinky finger. "You promise?"

He caught her pinky with his own. "Promise."

"Well, we're going to be late if we wait much longer," Natsuo beckoned Shinji to follow him and waited until he caught Akihiko's attention to do the same, "I shall bring your brother back to you soon, young Miki!" He swayed dramatically out the door, only after Shinji and Akihiko had both done the same. "Fare thee well!"

They all smiled back and Natsuo gently closed the door on her soft giggling.

۞

The train ride there was long. Or, at least, Akihiko felt like it was. Everything was so alien to him! He stuck close to Shinji and Natsuo at all times, his eyes constantly fleeting around to try and take in everything around him. He had never been so far away from the orphanage before, nor had he ever seen a _train_. Most of the time, any attempts to go near the city usually warranted people shooing them off back from where they came. Satoru always told him that it was because the kids at the orphanage weren't the same as the other kids they saw in Iwatodai; it wasn't their fault, but all they could do about it was make sure to avoid those people and keep out from under their feet. Coming near a train, then, was something Akihiko would never have done of his own volition.

But today was... different. No one looked at him as anything less than normal. Was it because he was dressed in these fancy clothes? But so many people on the train were dressed even fancier than he was! He recognized just a few people wearing the same uniform that he and Shinji had been garbed in, too... were they like him?

"Did the walk tire you out? It is a distance away," Natsuo sat down in one of the many vacant places, so Akihiko and Shinji both did the same near him. "The train ride will be a while, too. If you look out the window, you can watch the ocean pass by."

Akihiko brightened immediately and got up onto his knees, looking over the back of his seat out the window. All he saw right now were rows and rows of people bustling around in the station; no oceans yet. He frowned again.

"Your first day of school shouldn't be hard. I'll help you find your school and from there, you just walk into your classroom and listen to your teacher. You can try making a few friends in your class, too." Shinji lowered his eyes from Natsuo's then. Akihiko was still engrossed in locating the ocean, beaming when the train started to move. He had never been inside of a moving vehicle before! It felt so... weird! "But just make sure to be nice and follow instructions, okay? I think Satoru already set you both up accounts in the school's cafeteria system, so pick whatever you want for lunch."

This sparked Shinji's interest. "What do they have?"

"Rice, tofu, fried eggs and noodles, fruit, soup... it changes every day."

"They have something new every day?"

"Yeah! Here, um," Natsuo slipped his backpack from his shoulders and pulled it between his legs, where he unzipped it just enough to fit his hand in and retrieve from it a folded piece of paper. It looked old, ruffled like any worn-down paper was, but the print on it was still quite legible. "...I think Mondays are 'tofu hamburger day'. They have boiled butter potatoes and miso soup, too. And you can always get some milk or juice with your meal."

Akihiko was in awe. "I've never had half of that stuff before!"

"Be careful with how much you get, though. You get a set amount of money for food for each semester. If you run out, you won't be able to buy anything."

The boy sank, slightly disappointed. The orphanage often did their best to provide a variety of foods - though by 'variety' he meant 'different kinds of soup' - but Akihiko, like many children in the orphanage, found that the meals left a lot to wish for. All of them had learned to deal with hunger, but the prospect of more food was something none of them would turn down; school lunches sounded like a welcome break from that.

Natsuo went on in his attempts to cover everything. "I'll have to go a separate way when we get off at the station, but I'll point you in the direction of your school. It's Terukazu Elementary School, 'kay? You should see a few big signs if you're going the right way..." Little did he know, though Shinji remained quiet and attentive to his words, Akihiko had lost interest in the matter and was sitting upright, backwards, in his seat again to peer out the window. Looking through his faint reflection, his soft smile slowly transformed into a full beaming grin, his heart skipping at the sight of the land giving way to the ocean beneath. It was so amazing! There was water everywhere, all swaying in the light of day, dancing with sparkles of sunshine and rimmed with the white foam it spit out onto the sandy shores. He had heard a lot about the ocean. A lot of the older children in the orphanage had visited it, actually, and talked about it, but he had never seen it for himself. It was too far for him to travel without an adult. But all the same, seeing this, the joy it filled him with... he couldn't help but remember Miki and how much she had wanted to see it, too. But she wasn't with him. It made him so sad to think that he had shared so much with his sister - everything he had, anything that might bring a smile to her face, make her happy and warm and cheerful like she always was - but now, he couldn't share this moment with her.

He turned back around and slumped in his seat, his eyes downcast.

"Oh! And I know we don't do it a whole lot at the orphanage, but it's really important that you call everyone by '-san' at school, okay?"

Even if it was only for a day, he already missed her.

۞

Later, once they got off the train, he never recalled feeling so lost in his life. It must have been obvious how fidgety he was by his expression, for Natsuo kept telling him to calm down, that everything would be fine. What baffled Akihiko most was how calm Shinji could be about everything. Granted, he was next to always calm - like 'calm' and 'angry' were Shinji's only two moods - but they were in a completely new place, full of people they didn't know! What if they got lost, or messed something up, or...?

"You know Hania, don't you? She's in our faction."

The boy held his breath in hoping it might calm his racing thoughts. He and Shinji both followed Natsuo's extended finger as he pointed after a raven-haired female that both of them recognized, merely because her face was a part of their daily life.

"She goes to Terukazu, too. Follow her." He pat Akihiko on the back. "I gotta go."

The silver-maned boy grimaced in a clear display of nervousness, but when Shinji started off with his pace as unfaltering as always, Akihiko ran back up next to him. He cast a look or two in the brunette's direction, but his companion always kept his eyes forward. He didn't even seem too concerned with keeping Hania within view, either, but instead followed the paved road that was lined with children dressed just like them. Well... he seemed to know where he was going. If all these kids were dressed like them, then they must be going to the same place. That was only common sense, right? Right.

He'd be all right. He'd get back to the orphanage after school ended and be able to tell Miki all about it. _I'll be here for her when she joins next year, too._ He smiled; that thought consoled him a little. He liked being there for his little sister.

As they walked, Akihiko continued to take an express interest in their surroundings. The walkway was almost flooded with children... he had never seen so many people around at one time. They were all chatting amongst each other, accompanied by adults that led them to their assigned destinations. ...In fact, he thought that was odd. No kid that was his or Shinji's age was out by themselves, without an adult. He knew that everyone at the orphanage lacked parents - that was why they were there in the first place - but were parents really so common? Was he really _that_ much different from everyone else? He tried to shake the thought from his mind. Instead, he kept his eyes open and tried to make out where all the other children his age were going, so that he and Shinji knew where to go.

The building was... fancy, for lack of a better word. Just like this uniform he was supposed to wear. Akihiko decided that school must be prohibited to unfancy people.

"Welcome, welcome!" The gust of cold air that burst against him and Shinji when they scaled the concrete staircase outside, entering through the row of many doors that led into the building, made Akihiko shiver in his place. Shinji, unsurprisingly, remained stoic. "It's so nice to see so many of you today! Your first day of school, aren't you excited?"

Both boys followed the pressing line of children, leading into the left branch of the main hallway, where this woman was beckoning them.

"If you're new, make sure you stop by the office, okay?"

Akihiko stopped immediately.

"W-Wait," He reached forward and grabbed Shinji's sleeve, who stopped and looked back at him, rather stiff and blank. "We're new. Should we go to the office?"

The brunette looked from Akihiko's scared face to the continuous flow of peers, who had begun walking around them. He narrowed his eyes, confused, unable to answer. The woman that had been greeting them earlier started to approach when seeing the puzzlement on their faces. "Are you two new? ...Where are your parents?"

Shinji turned that glare onto the woman. "We don't have any."

She recoiled just barely in her surprise. "...Oh," She swallowed nervously and glanced around before resting her eyes on them, "You're from Kawatani, then, aren't you?"

Akihiko tried to speak up to compensate for his friend's lack of courtesy. "Y-Yeah, we are. We're new. Um... first grade? Should we go to the office?"

The woman nodded. "Come with me." They did this without argument. While they walked, the younger of the two took to examining his surroundings again; the floor beneath them was cold, a sheer and polished tile that extended all throughout the building where Akihiko could see. The hallway was huge, bigger than anywhere inside of the orphanage. The ceiling extended so high up, and the width of the hallway was immense... in the middle of it, in front of the doors that led inside, too, there was a large circular area where tons of plants were growing. That was so weird! Why did they grow plants inside of the building? Did they eat them? Those plants must be used to cold environments. Akihiko frowned and neared Shinji, subconsciously seeking him out for warmth, as he started to tremble from the intensity of the building's freezing temperature.

They walked through another large door into a room with a desk so tall that Akihiko had to strain to look over it. There were some more adults behind it.

"I have two first graders from Kawatani here. I guess they weren't mailed print-outs."

A few of the adults stopped and glanced over at him and Shinji. The brunette refused to meet their eyes, remaining stiff and quiet. Akihiko fidgeted.

"I think I heard that the new Kawatani children were going to be in Nakamura's class this year, but I can double-check." One of the women shuffled around with some papers on her desk behind the counter. "Let me see... what are their names?"

The woman was about to prompt them, but Akihiko had heard the question before, and so tried to politely take initiative. "I-I'm Akihiko. Um, Sanada?" When Shinji stayed quiet, he hesitated and tried to speak for him, "This is Shinji."

After a silence, they prompted further, "Shinji what?"

Ah, crap. He didn't know his last name. "A-Ara..."

The brunette saved him from his stammering fit. "Shinjiro Aragaki."

Some few minutes later, during which Akihiko quietly thanked his friend for speaking up, the woman behind the desk handed two papers to the one that had led the two boys into the office. She turned around and handed these to the boys, giving them both their respective papers. Akihiko immediately looked at it, excited to find out what was on it - was it a ticket? A picture? - but... instead, all it had were little scribbles on it.

What good was that? Was this one of those things you had to read? He squinted at it and held it back a little further from his face just to make sure it wasn't a picture. It wasn't.

"Oh, you can't tell what it says?" The guide lady walked back up, pointing a finger to a particular scribble on the paper. Akihiko tried to decipher it, with little luck. "That's the name of your teacher - Nakamura. You and Shinjiro are in her class."

The boy asked a question more pertinent to him. "Shinji's in my class?"

"Yes, you both are together in Nakamura's class."

Akihiko bounced at this, smiling. "Yay!"

Shinji didn't look so enthused, although for different reasons.

۞

That morning was full of new experiences. After he and Shinji had been led into their assigned classroom, they were seated at one of the many small tables that dotted the room, along with many other children their age. There was yet another woman inside - their "teacher", who they were told to refer to as "Nakamura-san" or "Sensei". Akihiko theorized that she must be like Satoru for the kids in this class, so he always made sure to give her his undivided attention when she spoke. A loud bell went off a few minutes after they arrived, and then Sensei went to the front of the room, where she addressed all of the children and reminded them that today was their first day of first grade. They would be learning how to read, differentiate colors, names for the days of the weeks, months, and so on - and, "Most of all," she said, "we're going to have fun!"

The entire time, Shinji was unexciteable.

Akihiko was extremely nervous, but Sensei told him that their first assignment for the day would be to make friends with the people at his table. There were only four of them, himself and Shinji included. So he extended a friendly hand in greeting, shaking it with the black-brunette across from him, who was named Kobee Kumaki, and then looked to the only girl in their presence. He just had to do the same thing with her, right?

He froze. He wasn't used to talking to girls other than Miki.

For the first time since they sat down, Shinji spoke up, reaching his hand toward her instead. "I'm Shinji," he introduced himself, and was given the same courtesy.

Akihiko frowned and forced himself to do the same. If Shinji could do it, he could do it. Just, he never understood the other girls at the orphanage, so...

Once he introduced himself, the girl customarily did the same. "I-I'm Irie." The stammer of the little brunette's voice betrayed her nervousness, too. Akihiko just did his best to smile and remembered to say, "Nice to meet you."

All the children turned their attentions back to Sensei when she began to speak again. She told them that, now that they were all acquainted, they would all help each other in the next activity of learning how to read their very first book. A few students claimed that they already knew how to read books; most others, like Akihiko and Shinji, hadn't the faintest idea. They didn't have books at the orphanage. He knew how to read the orphanage's sign - it read, plainly, 'Kawatani Orphanage' - and several other signs in the area, but otherwise, lack of print to read meant that he had simply never learned.

Regardless, he followed along the best he could. He and Shinji both, though lost, picked up rather quickly on most of the premises and could read several short words by the end of the lesson. It was almost fun! Nakamura chose him to try reading the last sentence of the book they were practicing with, and though he was afraid of speaking in front of so many people, he stuck with it and did his best, and made only a few mistakes.

"Good job, Akihiko!" The teacher walked up to his table, where he looked up nervously to meet her until she bestowed him with a small slip of paper. Curiously, he took it; it wasn't covered in scribbles - er, writing - this time, but instead was a little picture of a puppy. He looked back up at his sensei. What did this mean?

She noted his confusion and told him, "It's a sticker."

A sticker? ...Well, it looked kinda cute. He smiled and slipped it into his pocket.

"All right, students! We'll be going to lunch in just a minute."

۞

Lunch was something that Akihiko could get excited about. Though he had first been under the impression that all he had to do was run off to the dining room - wherever it was - he was later informed that they had to "form a line" before leaving. He did so with Shinji, with Kobee having rushed ahead of them, and Irie finding herself comfortable at the back with several other girls. With the whole classroom arranged this way, they started off down the hallways in a uniform fashion, Akihiko doing his best the entire time to quell the hungry rumbling of his stomach. They usually ate lunch earlier at the orphanage.

Contrary to Akihiko's expectations, though, the "cafeteria" was nothing like the dining room at the orphanage. It was much larger, for one thing. It was lined with rows and rows of tables, all of which were occupied by different students of different grades, most of them older than himself, and it was filled with the warm scent of various foods.

The boy's heart raced with glee and excitement at seeing it all. He'd never seen so much food before! But, then, just as quickly as he was excited, he stopped and sank again, wondering what Miki was doing back at home. She had probably already eaten what small amount of soup for lunch that was offered to her every day. Maybe if he brought her some food back, then, that would make up for it. He couldn't stand to imagine her going hungry.

"Everyone keep an eye on the time, all right? Yoshida-san will be staying with his class during lunch. When they start to leave, make sure to follow him back to my class!"

The class was filed through a door that led into a line where the children were served their lunches one-by-one. Akihiko swallowed the excess saliva that gathered in his mouth in anticipation for food, and brought his eyes back to Shinji; the brunette looked the most perky he had all day. Akihiko smiled. At least something still interested him.

When it was his turn, the boy was unsure as to whether he was supposed to request which meal he got, or if he just waited until it was handed to him. It turned out that he was supposed to take what was given to him, which was fine with him, and he stood nearby in line until Shinji got his, too. Both of them selected a carton of milk to drink and wandered to the end of the line where they had to stay until they purchased their food. At the cashier, they were told to hand over the papers given to them earlier that day, the same one their teacher's name was on. "Your ID number is on it," The cashier had told them, pointing to a particular spot on the paper. "Type in the numbers on the keypad in the order they're in on here in order to pay for your lunch."

They swiftly did as they were told, encouraged by the reward of food. They headed straight for their class' table afterwards, seating themselves amongst their peers and digging ravenously into their meal, making sure to maintain some degree of the manners taught to them - though Shinji had a more difficult time - about proper etiquette at the orphanage.

Only mid-way through his plate of food, Akihiko heard the lively chatter and amiable atmosphere broken by several rising voices.

"No! Please, that's all I have to eat!"

"Ooo, what're you going to do? Tell your parents?" The mocking voice came in reply. Both boys looked up. "Oh, that's right! You don't _have_ any!"

Akihiko nearly jumped out of his skin at the intensity of Shinji's reaction. The brunette threw himself out of his seat and immediately darted off around the table toward the scuffle; his younger companion chased him soon after, noticing that the encounter was between two older male students and the familiar sixth grader, Hania. But almost as soon as they came within earshot of the three older students, they took notice of the newcoming boys and started up laughing again. "Oh, look! Hania-chan's little bodyguards! What are they in, _kindergarten?_" Akihiko stopped then, hesitating when he saw how much bigger these children were in comparison to him. How could they possibly help? But Shinji never paused in stride, stealing a tray off the closest table, much to the protest of the student who's lunch was on it. "Watch out, everyone! It's the Orphan Brigade!"

Shinji clocked the boy right in the jaw with that metal tray. "Fuck off!"

"Hey!" One of the teachers nearby stood up, and the commotion attracted two more teachers from tables across the cafeteria. "What did you just say?"

Akihiko reeled. ...What? What _did_ he say? He'd never heard that word before.

The boy who had been struck by the lunch tray lifted a fist in preparation to retaliate, but looked back and saw the adults were beginning to take note of the situation, sprinting toward them before things could further escalate. Still, Akihiko remained glued to his place, eyes wide in a dumbfounded shock while Hania degenerated to a crying fit, and the two offending boys tried darting off to escape the approaching punishment from their teachers. Only one of the adults came up toward him and Shinji. "I don't want to hear that language!"

The brunette spat, "But that son of bitch-!"

"Quiet! Not another word!" The man grabbed roughly at Shinji's wrist, who jerked back in protest, gritting his teeth and glaring venom at the older male. Akihiko panicked again and reached a hand toward his friend, but could do nothing as he was dragged off; he ran after them, even when the teacher noticed this and started to demand that he go back to his class table. He was too shocked to find the words to argue, but he stayed closely at Shinji's side the entire time, his fretting eyes locked onto the brunette as his struggles grew weaker and weaker. What had just happened? Why were those kids making fun of Hania? Why was this man so angry that Shinji was trying to protect her?

For whatever reason, the adult took Shinji into the boy's bathroom. Akihiko tread after them, fidgeting with his hands, a nervous tic of his.

The man squeezed Shinji's wrist, making the boy grit his teeth again. "I don't know where you learned those things, but I never want to hear them again, you understand?"

The brunette jerked his body against the adult's hold. "Go to hell!"

Akihiko held his breath when the man shoved Shinji over the rim of the communal sink, presumably where children washed their hands, and retrieved a glob of hand soap that he forced into the brunette's mouth. While the child spat in protest to this, struggling all the while, the adult only forced more past his lips and then clamped his mouth shut.

The youngest boy was indignant. Why were they doing that to Shinji? "S-Stop!"

"Get back!" The adult shoved his body between Akihiko and the child he was disciplining, who was forcibly retching into the sink, coughing and sputtering out soap suds. Another adult - one that he hadn't noticed previously - grabbed the younger boy's arm, starting to drag him out of the bathroom away from Shinji and the disciplinary teacher. "You kids from Kawatani need to learn that we don't tolerate such foul language in this school! I'll wash your mouth out with soap every time I hear you swear until you know better, all right?"

Shinji tried to hiss something else out. Whether or not it was a 'bad word', Akihiko didn't know, nor could he hear when he was being pulled further away, but it was smothered by another flood of saliva and hand soap from within his mouth. His last glimpse of Shinji saw to it that the man finally stepped back to let him cough out the rest of the vile substance.

"Stop struggling," The woman who had grabbed Akihiko spoke the command with a scorn to her voice that he had never heard before with Satoru or anyone else in the orphanage. What was wrong with these people? Shinji hadn't been the one to do anything wrong, and neither had he! "Whose class are you in? Nakamura's?"

He wanted to repeat what Shinji had said. Whatever it was, it clearly offended the adults! But fear of undergoing the same treatment as the brunette made him keep his mouth shut. He reserved his right to rebel instead by saying nothing, and refusing to tell the woman any of the things that she tried continuously to pry out of him. She must have assumed he was in Nakamura's class, anyway. The woman arrived at the classroom door, still squeezing his arm in her grip, and knocked roughly on it; when it opened, Sensei was there, and past her he could spot the many bewildered faces of his classmates all back in their original places. Lunch must have been over. He realized with a growl that he hadn't been able to finish eating. "This boy is in your class, right? He got involved with a scuffle in the cafeteria."

Nakamura stepped out of the room into the hallway, ushering the woman's hand off of Akihiko's arm. The boy jolted back away from her, his eyes watering, glaring venom at her and bringing his own sweating palm onto the red marks that the adult's squeezing fingers had imprinted on him. "He got involved in the fight? Are you sure? Where's Shinjiro?"

"I didn't see much for myself, but I heard him and that Shinjiro boy ran up and started attacking a pair of sixth graders. The older students were picking on another girl in their class. I took him because Yoshida-san was punishing Shinjiro for using terrible language."

"You shouldn't be so hard on them." Her voice quieted, "They're from Kawatani."

Akihiko recoiled at the implication. So what if they were from Kawatani?

"Oh... I see," The woman shook her head. "That must be why. That doesn't excuse their behavior, though. That only means the school should take more authoritive action."

The approach of the man from before - Yoshida, he must have been - was marked by Shinji's coughing, which carried after him all down the hallway. He tried to jerk his wrist from the adult's hand several times, each time failing because it was expected, and he was far weaker than his older counterpart. "Here. I've told him that I'll punish him again the next time I hear him use foul language." Finally, he released the brunette, who thereafter ran back from the man and hid his eyes from all of them. Akihiko naturally gravitated towards his friend, shaking, wondering what he could do to comfort him. "Keep an eye on them, and bring that boy back to me if you hear him curse again."

Nakamura frowned and shook her head. "That won't be necessary, Yoshida-san."

Akihiko let his hand rest on Shinji's shoulder. "A-Are you okay, Shinji?"

The brunette refused to speak, his eyes rimmed with red.

۞

The rest of the day was painstakingly quiet. Shinji refused to speak a word, even when prompted to in class - Sensei must have realized his upset, and so excused his refusal to speak. Akihiko spent the rest of the day dreary in the aftermath of the incident and withdrew even more from his peers, who all seemed shocked and timid around both him and Shinji after the scuffle. _What a great way to start school,_ he thought dryly.

What frustrated him most was the adults' refusal to listen to their reasoning. Shinji had only been trying to help out Hania! The two boys who had been bullying her had been 'adequately dealt with', he was told, but that didn't make a difference about how Shinji had been so wrongly punished! Now he was even more quiet than usual, and Akihiko could tell that he was upset, however little he showed it. It saddened him, really. Shinji was a great friend. So he was a little rough sometimes, and he didn't know how to talk to people, nor did he always know the best way to express himself... but he was a good person, and it frustrated Akihiko to no end that the adults were treating him this way. And not just Shinji, but himself, too! He hadn't even done anything! Yet the adults had been whispering among themselves, "It's because they're from Kawatani. They don't have parents. They don't know any better."

What did being an orphan have anything to do with it?

Now the other kids were frightened of them. Kobee would glare at them if either of them - well, Akihiko, since Shinji refused to speak or do much of anything - spoke without exaggerated politeness, and Irie flinched any time they looked in her direction.

Did they really seem so different...? Especially for such a misinformed reason?

The train ride back was just as uncomfortable.

Shinji had set his backpack up in the seat next to him, and lied down on it, shutting his eyes to mimic sleeping. Akihiko was seated next to him with his own backpack between his legs, examining the sticker that he had earlier been rewarded with for what he thought might be for 'being a good kid'. So much for that. What good a 'sticker' did him now.

But despite all that, Akihiko felt as though something needed to be said. "Shinji?"

The brunette didn't move for some time. But perhaps he realized that ignoring his friend would be unfair, and he sat up, letting his bangs fall from his eyes just enough to look at Akihiko. The fair-maned boy shook his head and spoke, "I wish I could be like you."

"Why the..." He paused bitterly. "...Why would you say that?"

"Hania was being picked on, and you didn't hesitate to help her at all." He frowned and felt the faint sting of oncoming tears. "I wish I could be like that."

Shinji closed his eyes again. "You would have done it for Miki."

...He would have, wouldn't he? If someone had been picking on Miki... Akihiko shuddered against the thought, if only for all the anger it brought about in him. Shinji was right. He would have done it a thousand times over for her. They could have choked him with all the soap they had, and he would never have regretted it.

But... Hania wasn't Miki. Why had Shinji done it for her?

While his mind was far elsewhere, his eyes lingering on the view of the ocean outside, the train began to roll into movement. Natsuo must have seen them just before, and walked up to seat himself nearby. "Hey, you guys!" He was all smiles until seeing how downcast the two boys were. "You look worn out. How was your first day of school?"

Akihiko kicked his foot against the floor. "It sucked."

"Really, now? It couldn't have been that bad."

"I still can't taste anything but soap," Shinji retorted.

Akihiko elaborated before Natsuo had time to ask. "There were some kids picking on Hania in lunch today. Shinji went up to protect her, but one of the adults got angry with what he said and took him to the bathroom and stuck a bunch of soap in his mouth."

Natsuo grimaced with sympathy. "It was Yoshida-san, wasn't it?"

The boy nodded solemnly. "I think so."

"He's always been a dick. I told you to be careful about cursing in school, Shinji; Yoshida-san's always been really hard on the kids from Kawatani, because he thinks they need 'extra guidance'. I think it's been an issue for some time."

The boy folded his arms and turned over onto his back, shutting his eyes against the light pouring in from the windows. "I should be able to say whatever the fuck I want!" At that, some of the other children on the bus looked over. A few adults gave the brunette dirty looks. Akihiko frowned; so it was 'fuck' that they didn't like?

"What does 'fuck' mean?" Natsuo made something of a frantic gesture that made the boy think perhaps he shouldn't say the word again. "Why don't people like it?"

"It's a bad word. A curse word," The black-brunette sighed. "Shinji was in a bad neighborhood before he was taken into the orphanage, as you know, and he picked up your typical language from the area. Satoru trained him out of it for the most part, but the orphanage is pretty relaxed about politeness and all... lots of us - the older kids, and the adults - are bad about swearing. But the school is a bunch of stiffs about it."

Ah, right. He had heard the word before, he just never knew what it meant.

Akihiko leaned back in his seat. "Why is it a bad word?"

"It just... is. It's considered vulgar. Or, er, impolite. People say it when they're mad."

"So it means, 'I'm really mad'?"

Natsuo shrugged, seemingly uncomfortable with the subject. "Uh... sort of."

The little fair-maned boy nodded his comprehension. He thought, in that case, that Shinji was completely justified in saying it... but Natsuo had called Yoshida-san a 'dick', which sounded kinda bad, and so maybe that was just the unfairness of it.

"...So, Natsuo, what's a dick?"

"Ah, Aki, let's not go there."

۞

When the train stopped, Natsuo ushered Akihiko and Shinji both off the train after him. They made it out of the station without much difficulty, and Natsuo lingered around just outside of it to catch Hania, as well as the other school-age children in their faction. Some children had come and gone throughout the years, but there were always about eight or nine to a faction. Of the ones in Akihiko's faction, he personally knew three of them, not counting himself; in addition, there was Hania, and two others that attended Natsuo's middle school. Someone just barely older than Natsuo, Reiji, had fled the orphanage last year. Coming in to fill his place had been Ozora, who was practically an adult. All in all, the children returning to the orphanage from school tended to stick together as they traveled.

They all began to start on the long walk back to the orphanage, their tired and calloused feet thirsting for the opportunity to discard their shoes and touch the grass.

Natsuo tried to chat up the others. "How was your first day of school, Hania-chan?"

Her reply was what anyone would have expected, lamenting the discrimination of her classmates against her because she was an orphan. Akihiko was just beginning to wonder why having parents carried so much importance, and why lacking them made them so different. ...But he had better things to think about right now. Speeding up his footsteps, he came back to Shinji's side, where he retrieved his sticker from his pocket and held it in front of himself. It was slightly bent now, but it was still bright, cute, cheery.

He asked the brunette, "Do you think Miki will like this?"

"Huh?" Shinji glanced over aimlessly. "...Oh, that? Well, if you give it to her, she will."

Akihiko smiled, clearly satisfied. He hoped she would smile when he gave it to her. It wouldn't make up for all the time he was gone, but it was a start.

When they came to the outskirts of Iwatodai, the small group of children branched off into the grassy plains outside of the slum-like residential area that existed there. From here, they could see part of the dip in the plain where the river ran through; beyond it, they could see the humble building perched some distance away from the riverbed, the place that their weary footsteps directed them to. Home. To them, it always would be. Natsuo remarked when he saw it and challenged the group to a race to see who could reach the riverbed the fastest, to which Akihiko and Shinji responded by taking off at a sprint. The black-brunette never picked up his pace from a walk, but watched as the platinum boy of their group ran as fast as he could to outspeed his brunette friend.

Akihiko was faster - just barely. They collapsed in a heap near the bubbling waters, the grass damp with flecks of moisture that the current sprayed onto it.

"All right, you two," Natsuo helped them up when the group caught up, and Akihiko stuck his tongue out at Shinji, which the older retaliated by swinging a playful fist over his head. When that missed, he tackled the younger back into the ground, rubbing his knuckles furiously over Akihiko's head. He laughed and shoved at Shinji in his attempts to push him off, which were mostly unsuccessful until Natsuo had to turn back around and calm them down enough to start back on a productive path to the orphanage.

Once he finally faltered through those entry doors to the building, Akihiko realized he had never been so tired. Perhaps once or twice on chore days, but nothing had tired him out quite like today had. Miki flew out of the sleeping room to greet her big brother and Shinji, both of whom met her presence with smiles and pleasant chatter. "Oh!" The silver-haired boy whipped the sticker again from his pocket, "I got this for you."

Miki took it immediately into her hands, eyes wide. She took one glimpse at the little puppy printed on it and crooned in a happy, adoring fashion. "Aw, thank you, Akinii-chan!"

"My sensei called it a sticker. I'm not sure why, but I think-"

The girl gasped dramatically and darted back into the sleeping room.

"See?" Shinji plopped his backpack down against the wall, hardly bothering to edge it closer to the faction's sleeping room doorway. The children never had very many personal belongings, but what they did was usually arranged in the divided cubbies that existed in every faction's sleeping room. "I told you she'd be happy to get it."

Akihiko just smiled, tossing his backpack down as well, and flopping onto his back atop the floor._ I'm so tired I could fall asleep right here._

"Akinii!" Miki returned after a few minutes, crouching next to her fallen brother and flattening a blank book next to him. He sat up, bringing his eyes onto the object she had retrieved. "Remember this? Chichi bought me this book and some stickers for Christmas."

Oh, yeah! That was right! He had totally forgotten. But the sticker that Sensei had given him... it didn't stick. His brow furrowed with disapproval. So it wasn't a sticker, right?

"I wanna fill it all up with stickers!" The little female used her short but defined fingernails, under which there was the tiniest bit of dirt as a result of her outdoor play, to part the sticker from a thin piece of waxy paper that had protected its sticky interior. Akihiko made a thoughtful sound in realizing that his sister had successfully discovered a better use for the sticker than he had in mind anyway, and watched as she pasted it onto the first page in her little scrapbook, along with four other stickers she had gotten before.

Two stars, a moon, a rainbow, and a dog. Hah.

"Will you bring me home another sticker tomorrow, Akinii-chan?"

He got one for being a good student. After today, would he get another one?

He would for Miki.

"You bet!"

۞

From that day forward, Akihiko and Shinji adjusted to life in school. Neither of them were very outgoing, so neither of them made many friends, but slowly their classmates came to know them better and judged them more for who they were and the character they enacted rather than the label of 'orphan'. Their teacher, Nakamura, took a very sympathetic approach toward them, as opposed to several of the other teachers - of them, Yoshida-san, who always kept a stern eye on them. Their favor in their teacher's eyes saw to it that Akihiko and Shinji both got the occasional sticker for 'good behavior' and for doing a great job 'learning and having fun'. When Akihiko told Sensei that he was collecting them for his little sister, she gave him the additional opportunity to help her clean up after-class, for which he would get two extra stickers for the day. And Miki, every day when he came home to the orphanage, would take the stickers and paste them in her book.

It came to the point that Akihiko thought school wasn't _that_ bad. Shinji even enjoyed it from time to time; he caught the brunette practicing how to read one of Satoru's books or trying to write his name in the dirt of the forest they so often visited. Though Akihiko greatly missed his constant interaction with Miki, and she missed him just as much, it only encouraged them to enjoy their time together even more when he wasn't in school.

Once, she tried to sneak after him and Shinji, and managed to get as far as the front gate before one of them caught her. Akihiko had been in favor of smuggling her into class. Natsuo immediately refuted the idea, knowing that it wouldn't work, but had to take her to the office because he couldn't afford to miss class, nor did they have any means of communicating with Satoru back at the orphanage. Satoru then had to come all the way up to the school just to take her back home, all the while explaining that she couldn't go to school until next year. But Miki, as sweet and as loved by the orphanage staff as she was, managed to convince them to suit her up for school - kindergarten, an optional grade level that Akihiko nor Shinji had attended - and send her to it when summer break ended.

Akihiko was excited for it. He knew that Shinji probably was, too. The day before, they both helped her pack her supplies and fitted her into her brand new uniform. Miki stayed up an hour past her bedtime, just running at the mouth about how excited she was to go to school with nii-chan for the first time tomorrow. He'd show her everything, they'd ride the train and see the ocean just like he said, they'd eat lunch together, they'd come home...

Most of all, she'd even get her own stickers!

But, she reassured Akihiko, she would still generously take his off of his hands.

Miki's first day of school was much more successful than Akihiko's own. He made sure of it by telling Nakamura that he couldn't stay after class to help her today; his sister had been enrolled in school and he had to make sure she had gotten through the day safely. She sent him off with a sticker for being 'extra cute'. He didn't think that he could get stickers for being cute, because he never had before, but a sticker was a sticker. He didn't complain.

"Miki!" He had darted up, breathless, with Shinji walking not far behind him. His eyes searched for any distress on her dollish face. "How was your first day of school?"

"It was amazing!" She bounced around him, taking hold of his hands and thereafter detailing the fantastic events of the day. She learned how to read a few words, just like her big brother! She had the best lunch ever, better than anything the orphanage had ever given her - except maybe on Christmas, when they had a special, but small, dinner - and she had even gotten a sticker from her teacher! "Itoh-sensei is so nice!"

That day, they all went home in good spirits. In fact, the rest of the week played out that way. Miki was still shy, and so she didn't make any new friends, but she was happy eating her lunches with her brother and Shinji, and learning things from her new teacher.

It was around that next Saturday that Miki came to him after school, solemn-faced.

"Nii-chan, can we go on a walk?"

They were just walking down the steps out in front of Terukaru elementary when she asked. Akihiko turned back to look at her, frowning, as did Shinji. "What's wrong, Miki?"

She shook her head, refusing to say. "Did you get any stickers today?"

The boy nodded and dug into his backpack momentarily. Sensei had slipped the sticker into an envelope he had colored for a class project today, using his 'favorite colors'. Well, really, he only had one favorite color, which was red. But Kobee had stolen the red crayon. He colored his envelope blue until the red one was free, after which he had tried to color over the blue, only to get a resulting purple color. He decided to leave the rest of the blue be and just stuck with coloring the rest of it red. Sensei had given him a sticker for 'creative use of blending colors' as a result - even if it was, well, an accident.

Shinji had gotten one today, too. He had answered a question correctly in class. He never raised his hand to answer questions, but on the rare occasion that Nakamura picked on him to answer it, he always knew it. This impressed her, and warranted a sticker.

But really, everything warranted stickers these days.

Miki smiled and took both of them with profuse thank yous to both boys, stopping for a moment to plop herself and her backpack down, slipping her sticker sketchbook out from within it and pasting the two new additions to her sixth page before returning it into her bag and taking a few quick steps after them. They had just then reached the fork in the road, where they had to turn in order to reach the train station; Akihiko and Shinji turned from habit, but when Miki didn't, both of them stopped and again turned toward her.

"You said we were going on a walk," She objected.

Akihiko reasoned with her. "But we gotta go home, don't we?"

"We'll be okay. We can still make it back before the sun goes down. Chichi will wait."

Natsuo, Hania, and the others had gone ahead of them today. Deciding to submit with his sister's demands, Akihiko tread after her, and Shinji followed.

None of them had ever gone this way. Well, Akihiko reasoned, perhaps Shinji had. He wasn't sure where the brunette had been specifically prior to his arrival to the orphanage, but he might have been so young at the time that he didn't remember it very well, either. The paths leading away from the school were all lined with trees, middle-aged as they weren't too small, like saplings, nor too big; the area was covered by a thin shade through which golden-red rays of afternoon sun slipped through. Cars passed by them. They heard the monorail start up in the distance, taking off to hoist its many passengers off to Iwatodai.

Tatsumi Port Island was lively, he thought. People bustled about everywhere. He saw teens, he saw salesmen, he saw children his age walking home from Terukazu with their parents. Oh, but some of them weren't with their parents. In fact, he could pick out one or two that were accompanied by their older brothers or sisters, instead.

He looked at Miki, who was always close by his side. He knew how much she depended on him; it always filled him with warmth to think of it.

He held out a hand when he asked, "So, who else sits at your table, Miki?"

The girl took him up on his offer, pressing her palm to his and squeezing her fingers around his pale hand. "Um... Ryuhei-kun, and Naomi-chan. Sachi-chan has been sick lately."

"Have you made friends with any of them?"

Miki lowered her eyes. "...Ryuhei-kun let me borrow his crayons."

Shinji picked up on the female's melancholic mood and spoke up, "Hey, Miki," He smiled a little - something Akihiko could never get out of him, sheesh - and crouched down, beckoning her over to his side of the sidewalk. "I'll give you a piggy-back ride."

"H-Hey!" Akihiko immediately protested. "It's my turn to give her one!"

But his younger kinsman, with a giggle, had already betrayed him for his slightly-older friend. Shinji stuck his tongue out and stood up straight as soon as the little girl had her legs against his waist, where he could easily support them, and her arms around his neck. "Too late!" Akihiko threw himself after the brunette in a fit, but since Shinji sprinted away just then, his tackle missed. "Carry my backpack, would you?"

The platinum boy sighed and bent over to lift Shinji's backpack from the ground, pulling one strap from his own backpack off of his shoulder to replace it with one of Shinji's. It was that way that he found himself walking down the cement path with two over his shoulder, his own weight nearly doubled as he walked after his two friends.

"I won't forget this, Miki!"

۞

Neither of the males had ever asked where Miki intended to take them. When they finally asked, she told them that she didn't know - she just wanted to go on a walk. So they kept walking, trekking onward, until they could no longer. They came to a beach, beyond which was an ocean that they could not cross with footsteps.

Shinji, who had carried the girl the entire way there, lowered her onto the sand and collapsed, showered by puffs of grain on impact; Miki squealed and ran out toward the seashore, weaving excitedly back and forth on the cold line of sand where the shoreline ended. The sea water lapped up toward her, soaking her feet with every strong but gentle wave that crashed up near her. Akihiko, too, abandoned both backpacks next to the fallen brunette and ran forward, his laughter mingling with that of his sister as they permitted their happiness for seeing the ocean so up-close to make them giddy.

"You'll never catch me, ocean!" Miki started to chase the waves back as far as they went, squealing when the tide turned and running back up the beach to safety. Each time it sprinkled at her feet - for it never truly 'caught' her - she giggled and pouted, as if lamenting her disappointment at the ocean's successful tag. Akihiko watched her for some time, laughing himself, looking back to Shinji; the brunette had propped himself upright by now and took to watching them while he caught his breath, but he did stand up once he saw that he had Akihiko's attention. Miki gasped, "...Hey, nii-chan, the ocean's gonna get you!"

Shinji slipped his jacket off of his shoulders, his shoes and his socks off his feet, and then unfastened and shed his shirt. "Not if _I_ get you first!"

Miki let out a mock scream, fleeing off down the shoreline. Akihiko gave his best imitation 'rawr' at the oncoming brunette, but jumped aside to avoid him at the last minute, leaving him to tumble into the waters; both fair-maned children giggled with one another, though Akihiko turned on his sister and caught her, subjecting her to a barrage of tickles. She writhed and struggled to escape his clutches, which Akihiko eventually let her do with a mock growl of defeat - just after, Shinji burst from underneath the water, completely soaked, and roared while collapsing on Akihiko's sister. She screamed again, but degenerated into giggles; her older kinsman had wandered onto the beach to shed his extra clothes, too, but came back running at the sight of Shinji. "I'll save you!" He called, tackling into the brunette to knock him off-balance, away from the fit of laughter that was Miki.

They all jumped and ran and played with one another until they were exhausted. Once they were, they each seated themselves up further on the shoreline, where the water couldn't touch them, soaked in water and sand - both boys moreso than Miki was, who had managed to avoid being pulled into the water, perhaps because they were both soft on her - and the little female took to digging her fingers into the sand in search of shells.

"What're you doing, Miki?" Akihiko had prompted her, breathless.

"Seashells," was her definitive response. She held up one she had already found of a beautiful white shade, coated in a prism sheen that flashed rainbow in the sunlight.

He held out a hand, an unspoken request to see it. Miki immediately handed it over to him and continued to dig in a patch of sand near her foot for another shell she had spotted, while the silver-haired boy turned the tiny shell back and forth in his hand.

Shinji reached toward him. "Can I see?" Without any protest, Akihiko passed the shell to the brunette, who also inspected it. "This is a nice one, Miki."

"Thanks, Shinji-chan!" He handed it back to her and she dropped it into one of the pockets of her damp, sandy uniform skirt, just beginning to unearth another conch. Both boys watched her do this for a minute, their eyes afterward lingering off to the horizon, where the line of the ocean met the sun to swallow it up for the night.

Despite the beauty of it, Akihiko frowned. So much time had passed since they left school, and yet... "Hey, Miki... why did you want to go on a walk?"

She fell quiet. She put the second seashell in her pocket, and entwined her hands.

"...Akinii, where did Momma and Dad go?"

The question hurt like a prick in his chest. So that was why.

"We were talking about parents today. Naomi-chan asked me about mine, and I... I told her I didn't have any. She called me weird and started teasing me about being an orphan. Itoh-sensei even pulled me aside and asked me if I really was one." When he was quiet, and Shinji had just as little to say, she continued, "Why does it matter that I'm an orphan? ...Where did Momma and Dad go? Did they not love us? Why aren't they here?"

Akihiko had asked himself the same questions so many times. But yet, now that Miki had turned to him for the answers, he hadn't the faintest idea what to tell her.

"...I don't think it matters that we're orphans, Miki."

"Then why does everyone treat us different? Like we're not the same?" Her voice wavered a little, "Is it because, the only reason you don't have parents is because they didn't want you? Are you only an orphan if you can't be loved?"

Akihiko turned to look upon his sister's face, overshadowed by her silvery bangs, her glassy eyes and cheeks illuminated to radiance by the sun. "_I_ love you."

The girl submitted a whimper and held her hands to her face, her tears escaping.

He twinged inside at the sight. He hated it when she cried. It happened, he knew that - sometimes she stubbed her foot, sometimes she had a bad dream, and so sometimes she cried - but when it did, it hurt him so that his own eyes filled with tears, and he knew that the last thing to make her feel better would be to see her brother crying. He reached over and hugged the female against him, his hands trembling all the while as he, too, became upset for her, and gently used one of them to swipe the tears away from her face.

"I don't know where Momma and Dad are, but I'll always be here for you, Miki."

She trembled in his arms, but there was no mistaking the way she smiled, however crooked as her lips fought the urge to express a sob. "I l-love you, Akinii..." She sniffled to restrain her tears, although they always managed to find their way down her cheeks; any time they dared stain her face, illuminated like currents of liquid glass by the setting sun, Akihiko raised his hand yet against to wipe them away, all the while holding her close. Her tremoring started to calm itself again before long.

...He meant that. He would _always_ be there. If there was anything he could do to ensure he never had to see her cry, ever again... he would do it in a heartbeat.

But then her eyes, rather than meet those of her brother, sought out Shinji. She turned her head to look at him, the brunette who remained by his lonesome aside from the two siblings, and reached out a hand, her squinting eyes freeing more tears. He saw this, but for a few lingering moments, he only watched her; her fragile smile faltered, but the instant it did, the brunette lifted his own hand and cupped it around the one she had outstretched.

Finally, he smiled. But there was a sadness to it. "I'll... be here for you, too, Miki."

She squeezed his hand in her grip, dark in comparison to her fair skin. "Shinji-chan."


	3. Chapter 3

From that day forward, the beach shores of Port Island Station became one of Miki's favorite places to frequent. It was far from the orphanage, so they didn't get to go every week, but every visit was a highlight of the girl's week. Of course, the boys loved it too, and Akihiko developed an impressive penchant for swimming during their trips there. Sometimes, like that first evening they went, they didn't leave until after the sun set, and by the time they got back Satoru was fuming in a panic over where they were.

They got a couple of swats for that. They were forced to do their faction's laundry - since their own uniforms needed to be washed after running around on the beach with them - as compensation for not coming home before dark, but Miki said that she wouldn't take it back for the world. Shinji, in jest, told her to speak for herself. Akihiko laughed.

They were young, and Satoru disapproved of their spending time at the beach without supervision. But no matter how many times he told them not to go, they still went from time to time. It was his scorn that kept them from wandering to the unfamiliar areas on Port Island, though; the only path they traveled from school was to the beach and to the train, and they stayed far from the malls, the main roads, the high school, and the slums. The beach was good enough. Miki started a collection of seashells to go along with her sticker scrapbook, and school carried on as normal as it could for a couple of 'orphan kids'.

Adjusting was difficult, but they did it. Some children befriended them and didn't care the least bit that they had no parents. Others took it as an incentive to tease them under the assumption that their lack of parents would make the school administration less eager to stand up for them. This was true, sometimes. Being orphans, they were seen as likely candidates for childhood trouble-makers, and sometimes they were blamed as the culprits when they were, in fact, the victims. Because of his demeanor, Shinji got the brunt of that treatment. But other times, it only meant that their teachers punished their offenders more harshly. Miki, especially, was a favorite of her teachers.

But nonetheless, the months slipped into years. Slowly, the trio became more adventurous in where they would travel, exploring new depths of Port Island as every day granted them more and more courage. ...Well, such was the case with the Sanadas, anyway. Shinji wasn't scared of going anywhere, which he frequently liked to show off. Both siblings always admired his fearlessness, the way he guided them through crowds and traffic, and made sure they avoided signs of danger to get to the places they were going to quickly and efficiently. He knew some backroads that neither of the Sanadas ever would have.

One of their favorite places was the Port Island Station. Why? Mostly because it was one of the few areas that didn't kick them out. Unless they were wearing their school uniforms - which, granted, _was_ most of the time - they weren't allowed anywhere near Paulownia mall. The one time they tried going there on a Sunday, they were chased out in a record time faster than you could shake a stick at. The back of Port Island Station _was_ a rundown area, one that they had been taught to avoid at all costs, but they found their own special alleyway that went mostly undisturbed by the sleazy frequents of the area. Most of all, what they loved to do was make use of a secret back door of the movie theater that the Port Island Station was known for. Time and time again, each time with more bravado and confidence than the last, they snuck in to watch movies and pick up the occasional bag of popcorn or cup of soda left behind by the other patrons.

That day had been no different than the many before it. It was late September.

Their first-ever venture into the movie theater had been earlier last month. It was Shinji who ended up coaxing them into doing it, spotting the back door to the building when they were skirting around the area after school, scouting out what to do. Though Akihiko and Miki were less inclined to do it, Shinji made it out to be a challenge, therefore automatically obliging Akihiko to it, and Miki was willing to so long as the two boys were. Remarkably, it had been a success. Since then, they committed it again, later that same week; then, they made it a point to do it two or three times a week from then on. So far, they hadn't received any retribution for it. They made sure not to bother anyone in the movie theater, and they never stole anything that wasn't deliberately left behind by the patrons. They watched movies - something that most of the kids in the orphanage had never seen before in their lives, until they were older and had jobs with which they could afford suitable clothes for public and the tickets necessary for entrance. No one caught the little trio. They slipped out the same exit they came in when the movie was over, and as it was usually nightfall by then, they started back for the train station so that they could make their way home.

On the 21st, this routine had been no different. A movie that had been especially popular with Akihiko and Shinji's classmates had just come out, and they wanted to see it - Miki was just as willing. That day, they found a whole box of Sugar-Tarts had been left behind after the movie, too, and upon Miki's request, Akihiko handed them over to her for her to feast on. Candy was almost completely alien to them, given its expensive price tag paired with its complete lack of nutritional value; the orphanage didn't have the money to afford wasting it on treats like that, and yet Miki still managed to have an insatiable sweet tooth. That was fine with the boys. Neither of them were as especially fond of sweets as she was.

There had only been half a soda left in the theater today. Shinji used his pocket knife - one he had found in the back alleys of Port Island, and carried with him everywhere since, making sure to keep it specially hidden when he took it to school - to cut off the contaminated end of the straw, and they passed it around to take sips as they wanted. However, it was diet. After one sip, Miki stuck her tongue out and refused more.

"What time is it?" The girl had asked while popping another tart into her mouth, the increasing heaviness of her eyelids betraying her impending fatigue. The movie had been a little later than they were used to; Akihiko knew that this probably didn't bode well for them when they finally reached the orphanage. _Chichi is gonna be mad again when we get back._ Shinji, meanwhile, provided a snap response to Miki's question. Rather than scale the staircase that led to the station, where a clock would provide him the time, he jumped from the top of a nearby trashcan onto the vending machine next to it, leaping up from there and grabbing the border fence of the upraised station entrance to prop himself up.

"It's a little after nine," He informed them, jumping back down onto the vending machine. The metal clanked loudly underneath his sudden weight. "Why? You sleepy?"

Miki yawned before she could respond. "Mm, well... a little."

Akihiko took her hand - something like second-nature for him, now - and kept her close to him as they walked. He looked around the immediate area, noting the many shifting crowds of teens in the area; a lot of them showed up around this time. "Hey, Shinji," He called up to the brunette, "when's the next train leaving for Iwatodai?"

He stuck his tongue out. "Come look for yourself!"

"Wha- but you can already see it from there!"

"Bet you can't get up here!" The brunette taunted.

"Oh yeah?" Shinji thought he couldn't get up there? Pah! "I'll show you that I-"

The rest of his words were drown out by an uproar of screams in the direction of the theater, from a mostly-female crowd that had gathered there. None of the little trio thought anything of it; the teens that often came to the theater were loud and obnoxious. Akihiko was just landing, finding his footing atop the vending machine, when he finally looked back. The screams hadn't silenced. But when he turned his head, rather than spotting anything, he was assaulted by an onpour of blinding light and the roar of an engine fast-approaching them. What in the world was that about? Cars didn't come through here!

"Move!" Shouts came toward them. "Get out of the way, that car is going to crash!"

His first instinct was to move, just as they advised him. All he and Shinji had to do was jump onto the upraised station plaza over the fence and they would be completely safe from whatever harm befell the others below.

But there was one problem.

_Miki!_

The young girl had been startled out of her fatigue by the uproar, but she, too, had been blinded into a panicked stupor when turning to face the oncoming vehicle. With the car horn blaring and veering in its attempts to dodge through them, she felt something impact and shove her body. For that instant, her world became nothing but noise, light, and screams.

She flopped unceremoniously onto the cement sidewalk. Her whole body trembling, she saw that the candy she had earlier clutched had fallen from her hands and scattered everywhere. ...Was she okay? In her daze, she couldn't tell if she had been hurt. Her eyes lifted, but her pupils were still dialating from being earlier blinded, and the darkness was an impermeable wall that blocked her vision. She... she didn't feel anything. The noise of the car had stopped. Now, there was a thunder of approaching footsteps.

The girl tried to sit up. Her eyes focused. ...The car had completely missed her.

"A... Akinii?"

Her timid voice heeded no reply.

"Some kid is trapped under there!"

Shinji had already jumped onto the hood of the car and back down to the dusty ground, heaving the weight of his whole body into the effort of moving the ruined vending machine away from the wreckage. Cans of soda and bottled water spilled out, littering the ground with his every frantic shove. "Shit! You dumbass, what were you thinking?"

"Did anyone get hit? Someone get the driver!"

"Call the police! Call the police!"

When the vending machine wouldn't budge, the brunette instead forced the entirety of his strength against the automobile, crying out with both the sheer effort he threw into the movement and the hysteria that began mounting within him. "Aki! Aki, if you can hear me, say something! The police will get here soon, but I need you to..." His voice wavered, tears burning at his eyes that he had always tried so hard to hide away, "say something..."

Miki flew to his side, huddling near him and crouching by the car, her eyes wide with shock. "Akinii! A-Akinii-chan, where are you? Where are you?"

From underneath the car came a pale, trembling hand.

"Aki, are you all right?" Shinji stood and tried once again to shove the car, his breath coming in great gasps, all in vain; there was nothing he, as an eight year old boy, could do. Teenagers and a few adults, too, were now bustling around the wreckage, crouching around the wheels of the car to see what had become of the accident's victim. Miki, instead, shot a hand forward and clutched at that outstretched palm, which felt so cold against her fingers.

"Akinii-chan, i-is that you? Are you awake?"

She strained to hear anything over the shouts, over the footsteps and sirens. But when he did speak, it was so enunciated in her mind that she could hardly hear anything aside from it. "M... Miki?" She heard him cough, and though she couldn't see his face, she saw blood splotch the ground near his hand. He was breathing. Every breath rasped, and his whole body shook with every puff of air, but he was breathing. "Are y... you okay?"

Tears spilled off of her face, but she made no sound. He had... he had shoved her out of the way, hadn't he? He had done this for her. How could she cry? How could she let him know how upset, how terrified, she was? "I-I... I'm okay. The car didn't hit me."

She heard him laugh. He was laughing. That dummy...

"...Good. I... I'm glad."

The sirens roared closer. When they screeched to a halt, bathing the wreckage in flashes of red and white, she felt his grip weaken in her hand.

۞

That stupid fucker. That stupid _fucker_.

"The driver's fine. Hurry and get him on a stretcher! Get to the kid!"

People crowded around everywhere. Teens clogged the walkways, spectators to the accident for no reason other than to satisfy their morbid curiosity. They approached him and Miki, pestering them with inquiries. "Are you okay? What about that little girl? Who got hit?"

_You don't care. Get the hell away from me._

Only minutes had passed since the impact. Some of the authorities were moving the car now. Shinji couldn't help boiling with anger; the driver had made it out of the wreck completely fine, save for some deep cuts, because the air bag had prevented his injury. He had been drunk. Now, because that _asshole_ was so fucking hammered that he couldn't tell the sidewalk apart from the road, Aki might be dead.

He was unconscious now. Miki said he had been talking to her just before he fainted. Now, as the authorities lifted the automobile enough to slip his body out from underneath it, she was crying her eyes out. All he could do was hold her. He couldn't tell her that Aki would be okay - he didn't know that. When some of the teens gasped at seeing the young boy's body, Miki tried to turn her head to see him. Shinji grimaced and covered her eyes.

He couldn't see that well for all the dark and the flashing lights. But it looked like Aki's head had gotten the worst of it. The whole left side of his face was slick and red.

"Does anyone know this boy? He wasn't here by himself, was he?"

Miki broke herself away from the brunette to run toward the voice, firm and authoritive, quieting the many others. She stopped next to the officer and grabbed the sleeve of his uniform, netting his attention, and Shinji remained close behind.

"He's m-my brother," She stammered, timid, her lips resisting her speech.

The officer turned to her and set a hand on her shoulder. "Where are your parents?"

More tears flooded past her cheeks. "W-We-"

"We're cared for by Satoru at the Kawatani Orphanage," Shinji stepped in for her. That was the information they needed. The officer paused for a baffled moment, then turned and slipped a walkie-talkie off of his belt. "Yeah, the victim of the crash was a kid from the Kawatani Orphanage. ...Yeah? Would you connect me to them?" The brunette returned to Miki's side, wrapping his arms around her again. What if Aki did die? What would become of her? "I need someone named 'Satoru'..."

"Hey, you two." Shinji looked up. Miki did, too, albeit more delayed. "Come in the back. You know this boy, right? You can ride with him to the hospital."

۞

The ride there was silent. The medics bustled around Akihiko's stretcher, checking his vital signs as they went, but Miki and Shinji both failed to utter so much as a syllable the entire ride. They were kept facing away from the stretcher along the side of the ambulance, and however much Miki tried to look back at her brother, the brunette refused to let her. She eventually came to understand that it was probably for the best, and she rest her head on his shoulder, allowing her tears to soak through the thin layer of fabric that covered it.

When they arrived at the hospital - which didn't take long, as there was one located on Port Island, not far from the station - the paramedics ushered the children out after removing the stretcher from the ambulance. They all trotted inside, while several other employees wrapped up things inside the emergency vehicle, and a spare nurse was offered to the team to look after the two emotionally-shaken children.

Akihiko was sent into one of the emergency rooms. Shinji and Miki were given explicit orders to stay out of the room, to stay instead in the waiting room, where the nurse assigned to them was busy assessing them for injury.

"Nothing's wrong with us," The brunette insisted edgily. "You shouldn't be wasting your time worrying about us when you can help Aki."

"Neither of you was injured at all?" The woman was checking over Miki, who was was so blank and pale-faced that she obviously hadn't the energy to fight.

"No! I'm not the one who got hit by a fucking car!"

"Shinji!" Miki's voice made him jump a little. "She's just trying to help!"

His body constringed and he forced his gaze downward, shaking.

The nurse shook her head, her eyes sympathetic on the two of them. "I know you're scared," she sighed, standing back up from her crouched position next to Miki's seat. "But I promise, we're doing all we can for your friend. He's in good hands."

With nothing else to offer to them, the woman gave them directions to the cafeteria in the case that they were hungry, and left to return to her other duties.

Hungry. As if either of them had an appetite anymore.

Miki was uncharacteristically quiet, brooding, sitting stiffly in her chair with her eyes downcast. Shinji was almost a mirror image of this, withdrawing into himself in the face of crisis. He kept thinking... maybe he should have moved faster. He should have stopped Akihiko. But then Miki would have gotten hit, wouldn't she? No matter what happened, it would have been one of them. One of them was going to get hit.

But Miki needed Akihiko, and he needed her just as much.

They didn't need him.

It should have been him.

"Shinji! Where's- Miki, you're here too?" Somewhere in that long and excrutiating silence, the door swung open. Both children looked up. Satoru. He paused, and his face became shocked again. "No! You mean - it was Aki, wasn't it?"

Even though both children were still and silent, he knew he was right.

"Excuse me, nurse?" The man turned away from them to the counter, knocking loudly on the surface to draw their attention. He was given a few looks, some of them irritated. "I'm here for a boy named Akihiko Sanada? I heard he was brought to the emergency room, he was involved in an accident and brought here-"

"Sir, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to sit down-"

"I just want to know what his condition is. Is there anything I can do?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry. You'll have to wait for the doctor to ask for the patient's condition. I'll make sure to point him in your direction when he comes out."

"Ah... thanks," The man shook his head, running his fingers through the mess of black-brunette bangs across his forehead. He took a calming breath and looked back at the two children in the waiting room, his eyes both narrowing and yet growing soft at the sight of them. "I'll... be over there, with those kids."

Silence followed his footsteps. Neither Shinji nor Miki could find words to say. Miki's eyes were trained on the door that had swallowed up her brother, taking him away from her fretting eyes to a place where she could not follow, where she could not hold his hand and stand at his bedside just like she knew he would have done for her. Meanwhile Shinji pulled his feet up off the ground and hugged his legs against himself, his own indirect way of trying to hide himself from the world. He could feel Satoru's eyes on them. He knew that the adult was unhappy. They had been told time and time again that they shouldn't go out so late, they should avoid dangerous areas, and now this had happened. It was their own fault. It wouldn't have happened if they had listened to him...

But no such lecturing came. "How bad was it?"

Shinji shook his head, slow, trance-like. "The whole left side of his face..."

Miki looked down, her eyes beginning to puff with red.

Seeing her in his peripheral, the brunette clenched his teeth. "He'll... he'll be fine. We don't have anything to worry about. The nurse said so."

Satoru opened his mouth to inquire further, but one look at Miki made him realize why Shinji had refuted further elaboration. He, too, resumed the stagnating quiet, leaning back in his chair and shutting his eyes, propping his head up with a hand.

"...I thought something like this was going to happen. I just didn't want to be right."

The boy could hardly breathe for how tight his throat was. "...I'm sorry."

"Nah... it's all right, Shinji." The raven-haired male let a hand rest on the younger's shoulder, which brought the little one to stiffen considerably, his eyes becoming glassy; identifying this clear show of vulnerability - something so rare for Shinji - Satoru hesitated, then leaned himself over, wrapping his arms around the boy in a heartfelt gesture of comfort. It was funny, really, how he had to _remind_ himself that the boy was only eight years old. Shinji wasn't the most mature child of his age, no, but he was damn close to it. He was evaluative, perceptive, he had some of the best self-preservation skills that Satoru had ever known to be in a kid, and he had such a genuine compassion for other people and living things. Animals, especially. Hah, come to think of it, there had been so many times that Shinji had come back inside from the outdoors with sick or injured bunnies, squirrels, birds, whatever he happened to come across, and asked for help nursing it back to health. Unfortunately, more often than not, he was forced to let the little animals go. The orphanage had no money for animal food nor the vet bills necessary to give them the medical attention they needed. But Shinji always did his best to help them - often enlisting the help of Akihiko and Miki, too - even if the end result was death, and he had to dig yet another tiny grave in the plains behind the orphanage for another life cut short.

Granted, Satoru had been just as much impressed sometimes to see that Shinji had successfully nursed back to health and tamed a few odd creatures. He had managed to hold onto a chipmunk for a month before it was killed in an unfortunate accident with the vacuum. That had been... a sad day. For the chipmunk, and the vacuum.

The little platinum girl, set apart from both males by her lonesome, forced herself to remain strong, being the little trooper she always was. The fact that Miki was faring so much better than himself was enough to both embarrass Shinji and reinforce his need to maintain a composed front, and so all three of them stayed still and quiet until finally, someone emerged long overdue from within Akihiko's room. The doctor hadn't even stripped off all of his medical equipment, yet; he had obviously departed at the first opportunity.

All three lone residents of the waiting room trained their eyes on this man. He walked to the counter, where he exchanged a few quiet words with the nurse, and then turned to them for the long-awaited update. "You're all acquainted with the patient, correct? Akihiko Sanada? We just finished wrapping up the procedures, so he isn't all that lively at the moment - I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer to see him. But I can tell you that he is in stable condition, and I think he'll come out of this looking as good as new."

"That's great news! So... nothing permanent, right?"

"Not as far as I can tell." The man approached the cluster, beckoning the only adult among them. "I'd like to speak specifics with you if I can. You are the boy's primary caretaker, correct? A representative from Kawatani, I heard."

"Yeah." Satoru rose to his feet with a small groan. "Agh, I'm getting too old for this stuff. These kids are wearing me thin, yeah?" He smiled and looked back at the two children. "I'll be back soon, okay? Try not to miss me too much. It sounds like Aki will be all right."

Only then did Miki eventually falter and burst into tears.

"A-Ah! Hey, that's supposed to be a good thing!"

Shinji slipped out of his chair to move into Miki's, holding her snugly against him in a gesture of consolation, just as Satoru had done for him. "I'll take care of her." For that singular heartfelt moment, he nodded after the only man who had become something mimicking a father to him during his orphaned and estranged life. "Tell us about Aki when you get back."

۞

Her crying didn't let up once Satoru left. However many glances were cast in their direction, Shinji met them all with indignance; what right did they have to complain? Did they almost lose a loved one? No. They could shove their complaints up their asses. He, meanwhile, just did his best to console her with his presence.

He wasn't sure he did all that great, honestly. Shinji liked to think he was better at talking to girls than Akihiko was, but when it came to Miki, he was at an unfair disadvantage.

He wasn't even completely sure that she was upset about the news - just that it had finally permitted her the release of turmoil and upset that she had been fostering all this time. When she started to calm enough to speak, it turned out that this assumption was right. "Why? Why did he let himself get hurt?" she demanded between gut-wrenching sobs. "Didn't he know that it would hurt me so much worse to see him like this...? To leave me thinking that, maybe, he might... _die_, because he wanted to protect me...?"

"No," Shinji met her eyes seriously. "He was only thinking about keeping you safe."

"Aki needs someone to look after him as much as I do!"

The intensity of her outburst stung him a little. She could see the surprise there and turned away from him, shaking her head, the tiny curled ponytails swaying along with it. "I know. I would be helpless without you or nii-chan. But then, if that's true, shouldn't you try that much harder to keep yourselves safe, too? So you can always be there for me?"

...Shinji had never thought about it, to be honest.

She smiled a bitter smile. "...I know, you must think I'm selfish, huh."

"No. You're right." In all his time with the Sanadas, he hadn't ever consciously thought about it. Miki was right, in that as much as she needed to be looked after, so did Akihiko. He was reckless, he got into things he shouldn't; everything was a competition, and he was always trying to bite off more than he could chew. Growing up with Shinji, he had become more courageous over the years and learned to stand up for himself, but at the cost of making him even more rash than he had been in the first place. ...Aki had wanted to 'be like him', huh? _Well, look where it got you. You idiot..._

"He looks up to you a lot, Shinji. It's always, 'Shinji did this', or 'Shinji did that'... 'Shinji's not scared of anything'..." Her hands stretched at the fabric of her dress. That day had been a Sunday - it was Monday, now, as midnight had long since passed, but that was aside the point - and she had dressed in her favorite outfit, the only one specifically suited to her. It was a shade somewhere between lavender and periwinkle, accented with whites. Satoru had bought it for her, but Akihiko was the one who had put in the extra work with chores and stayed in the kitchen after dinner to clean dishes and pay it off. "I... I know this must seem like a strange thing to ask, but... if you could do anything for me, Shinji..."

He prompted her when she hesitated. "Yeah?"

"If something ever happens to me... will you make sure he doesn't get hurt?"

The very thought of it made Shinji sick to his stomach. But he knew, if it ever came down to it, Shinji would lay down his life for Akihiko... just as readily as he would for Miki.

"...Yeah. I will, I promise."


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Akihiko finally began to stir again, he never, _ever_ recalled having a headache as bad as the one he had now. He almost wished he could plop his head back onto the pillow he lifted it from and go back to sleep, just to escape the throbbing pain. The light that rushed past his eyelids at the first given opportunity only worsened his plight. He winced and his hands went up to clutch blindly at the air, to block his face from the rays of sun and overhanging light that so assaulted him. This movement was enough to evoke a string of cheerful gasps and chatter; "He's awake! Akinii-chan!"

Oh! ...Hah, there was Miki! With considerable effort, he forced his eyes open, blinking once or twice to clear the haze and bring his sister into focus. He stretched his arms toward her, which she immediately bounded forward to meet. "We were so worried! The doctors said you were okay, but you just kept sleeping and sleeping..."

He blinked a few more times, casting his view around. He didn't recognize anything around him, and it clicked then; he must have been in a hospital. He didn't remember ever seeing the inside of one before. So he'd gotten hurt that bad, huh? Everything that happened was a huge blur... he just remembered being afraid for Miki, pushing her away from something - a... car? - and his memory blanked out right after that. He remembered a lot of pain, and a lot of red, but otherwise, nothing. He probably just fell unconscious.

"Hey." Shinji's voice returned his drifting thoughts. The brunette turned to a small rolling tray, presumably the one that his food was on. What time was it, anyway? He squinted, searching around for a clock. "We went back to the dorm for a few hours, and I helped Riyeko make pancakes. She thought you might like some."

Akihiko's eyes were back on him at 'pancakes'.

"You made me pancakes?" The gasp that followed these words was dramatic, but he thrust his hands forward nonetheless, "Wow! You guys are the best!"

"Yeah, yeah. Eat your pancakes."

He didn't have to be asked twice.

The weird slidey-tray thing was pretty convenient. It was kind of like a rolling stand, but it extended a small counter over an empty space which permitted him to pull it near him while when sitting in his bed. He straightened himself upright, focused only on getting the fork in his hands and the delicious pancakes in his mouth, when Miki intercepted him. "Niiii-chan," She cooed and held up a large glass of his favorite drink, "I got you some milk!"

"Aw, thanks, Miki," He grinned and ruffled her hair some with a hand. Of course, it was only then that he noticed the multitude of cords - no, tubes - that followed his arm, and so he gave it a passing glance, only to near-faint at the sight of needles imbedded in his flesh.

"Oh! You're awake." Satoru popped through the doorway just then. Akihiko would have smiled if not rather taken with the issue of having needles stuck in his arm. "The doctor said it might be a few more hours... what's with that face?"

Akihiko was horrified. "They stuck needles in my arm!"

"They had to do that to administer you nourishment and fluids. And pain medicine." The little platinum boy disapproved of Satoru's complete lack of urgency. "What? Look, can you feel anything? If it's not hurting you, don't think about it."

He was still quite dissatisfied, but Akihiko did as he was told and tried to put it out of mind. With difficulty, yes. Since he was awake and able to test out his dexterity, he moved his left hand swiftly back and forth, down to his plate of food, wherever he directed it, all at his mind's silent command; his right arm, however, was more difficult to make use of. Of course, being left-handed, this didn't bother him as much as it puzzled him. Still, he looked down, drawing a hand over the fabric of the clothes he found himself in - which... were unrecognizable to him. Where did his clothes go? And why did they put him in... was this a...?

Akihiko lifted the sterile bedsheets, underneath which was his warm body, and assessed that, yes. For some reason or another, the hospital had stuck him in a dress. Where in the world were his clothes? Was he allowed to change back into them?

...Well, that could wait. He had pancakes to eat.

After the third or fourth bite had been popped into his mouth - or was it the fifth? He didn't bother keeping count - Satoru stood up, and beckoned Shinji and Miki over to him. "I'll tell the doctor that you're awake. After you eat breakfast, he's going to talk to you about what happened and what you'll need to do as you get better, all right?"

Since his mouth was full, he nodded his understanding.

"Do you have any questions before I go, or-?"

Akihiko made an eager sound and waved his hand to indicate that, yes, he did have an urgent question. He swallowed the mouthful of syrup-slandered pancakes with a few gulps of milk, "Are there any pancakes left at the orphanage?"

Each of them laughed a little. He grinned hopefully.

"Yes, yes, I think so. And if there aren't, we can ask Riyeko to make you another plate, just for you." Satoru ushered the two others out the door. "Okay?"

Akihiko's mouth was already full again, so gave the adult a thumbs up.

۞

Following several minutes of munching and clinking silverware, Akihiko found himself warm and pleasantly filled with the delicacy that was pancakes. He drank a few more swigs of his milk before setting the glass down, in which remained a gulp or two, and absently rubbed an arm over his mouth to free from it the milk and syrup that lingered there. He straightened the blankets over his body again and permitted himself to freely fall back, his head cushioned quite comfortably by the pillows behind him. So, now what? The doctor hadn't arrived yet. He couldn't leave, not with these needles in his arms - he followed each one and saw that they were all connected to varying apparatuses, none of which he had a single clue what they did - and even if he could, he wasn't sure what there was to do.

Hospitals, Akihiko then decided, were boring.

The door clicked open. He turned his head just enough to witness the approaching stranger, a man garbed completely in white, with a clipboard in hand.

He took a wild guess. "Are you the doctor?"

"Why, yes, I am," The man smiled at him before returning his eyes to the clipboard. Akihiko sat himself up straight again. "Akihiko, right? How are you feeling?"

He paused, assessing his overall condition. "...My head hurts."

"I'm not surprised." The man set down the clipboard and walked over to his bedside, where he took his hands to the young male's head. Akihiko hadn't noticed before, but the majority of his temples and forehead were completely bound in secure wrappings. When he lifted a hand, he could feel his hair sticking out from between these bandages in several places, but in these few places he could feel that the injury to his head had matted some of his hair together with blood. He cringed a little - he probably wasn't a comforting sight.

The doctor moved around the younger male's hands. He took a utensil off one of the nearby tables and cut the bandage away from his head with a single snip, unraveling the full extent of his wounds to the cold and sanitized air. Feeling the chill against his scalp made him shiver uncomfortably, the sting of it only adding to the intensity of his headache.

"Do you need some pain medication?"

Did he want some foreign substance squirted into his veins through a needle?

No, he could do without that, thanks.

The doctor accepted this polite refusal at face value and continued assessing whatever wounds had scored the child's body. He had a few deep gashes here and there, but they were so well-patched and cared for that he hadn't noticed them much - aside from a minor sting - and none of them bothered him quite as much as his head did. The doctor set aside the blood-stained bandages next to his now-empty plate of food, and touched a single, plastic-gloved finger to a spot that charged agony through the patient.

"Ow!" Akihiko's whole body seized with the second of pain. "That hurts!"

"It's still very tender, I see." The doctor stepped back. "Alas, I can't complain. You've done a much better job so far than any of us expected."

The child sniffled to withhold the tears that the pain evoked in him. "What... what do you mean by that?" He tried to lift a hand to touch at the wound, but thought better of it.

"Considering your head got the brunt of the impact in a car accident, you're a very lucky boy to have survived with as little repercussions as you did." The doctor smiled. "Nothing less than a miracle. Most people would have died under the same circumstances."

His face became slightly wane at this. "...I was the only one hurt, right?"

"Yes. Your sister and your friend were clear of the wreckage."

"That's good." Akihiko provided an absent-minded nod. "...So, um, everything is clear?" Some hope crept into his voice, "Do I get to go home now?"

"Well, aside from your head hurting, how do you feel?"

He paused and moved his arms again. Again, he was reminded how moving his right arm had become slightly more difficult, and told this to his doctor.

"That's probably because the left side of your cranium got the worst of the impact. ...You can still move it, though, right? I didn't detect any serious damage to your brain, but if it's too difficult or painful to move your arm, that could mean we missed something."

"O-Oh, it's not too hard." He smiled sheepishly, "I'm left-handed, anyway." The man inspected his expression for a moment, then nodded and removed his gloves, returning to his clipboard; Akihiko swallowed, then mustered the will to ask, "Could I have a mirror?"

"A mirror? ...Ah, you want to see your face. I think I've got one over here."

He moved to the opposite end of the room, opening a sliding drawer, from which he retrieved a small mirror and passed it over to Akihiko. Taking a small breath, the boy aligned the reflective surface in front of himself and located the point of his head that had been hurt.

...He bit his lip when he saw it. The laceration started across his left temple, just under his hairline, and extended a few inches into his scalp. His hair probably would have concealed it if not for the way it was matted and pushed aside, held still by the dried blood that encrusted the wound. Along the line of injury itself, there was no blood. It was simply discolored there, and he thought it was safe to assume that it had been cleaned when the doctors were patching the wound. What bothered him most of all was how gruesome the cut was, and how they patched it with something that looked disturbingly akin to barbed wire.

"W-What is..." He lifted a hand, just barely touching one of the pointed surfaces.

The doctor was busy with his paperwork, but looked back just long enough to see what it was Akihiko was so stunned by. "Like I said, your head got the worst of the impact. It had cut open your scalp, and you were losing a lot of blood. We had to patch it up. It took a few stitches." When the child's fingers held fast at one of the tiny wires, the doctor frowned and shooed his hand away. "Don't pick at them. It'll reopen your wound."

Miki... hadn't seen this, had she?

He wasn't sure he could stomach facing her, not with this horrible injury scarring his face. He remembered the many times he had gotten himself hurt, one way or another, when they were young kids; every cut warranted a hysterical fretting and crying that plagued him with a terrible guilt. Why he was so prone to injuries, he hadn't a clue, but if there was one thing he hated about them, it was the fact that they always brought his little sister to cry.

He didn't want her to cry. He didn't want her to see this.

The doctor began to depart just then. Akihiko's heart skipped with urgency and he blurted out, "Wait! Ah- this is going to sound... weird... but could I have a band-aid?"

The quizzical look given to him made him stop and falter.

"It's just, my little sister... I don't want her to see me like this."

His expression warmed. He nodded. "Sure, I'll have the nurse cover it up for you."

۞

And, just several minutes later, so she did. Akihiko asked her to help him clean up before she covered the injury, and the two of them endeavored to wash the blood from his hair and scalp in the nearby sink built into his room, handling the wound itself with utmost care. He did irritate it once or twice, and the stitches liked to prick him, too, but it all worked out in the end, and the nurse concluded the affair by patching a small square-shaped bandage onto his temple, just underneath his hairline. It didn't cover the part of the injury that snaked into his scalp, but his newly-cleaned and fluffed hair was sufficient to cover the rest of it. He washed his face off to wake himself up and tried to get used to walking around again - the nurse had bandaged his arm, too, after taking the needles out, something that would have triggered his gag reflex if she hadn't craftily distracted him with an ice cream cone she brought into the room just earlier - and, when coming past the mirror again, he double-checked the appearance of his new scar.

Yup. He looked as good as new! In fact, the bandage, placed where it was, was a nice touch. The wound was so nicely covered that he would probably pass it off as something as mundane as a cut. _Then Miki won't have to worry about it._

The nurse left again after that. Satoru, Shinji, and Miki had all been awaiting their next opportunity to visit; as soon as they were given the okay, they were right back in there. Akihiko greeted them cheerfully and shared elated hugs with all of them - except Shinji, who refused to do so until he was back in proper clothes.

After a long chat with the doctors and staff, Satoru herded the children off to the train station, where they would finally be able to return to their home in Iwatodai. At least, this would be the first time Akihiko saw it since the accident. Miki, who had been kept up the entire night with her fretting over the boy, fell asleep almost immediately after they boarded the train; Shinji was more attentive and asked how he felt from time to time, whereas Satoru was surprisingly dark-faced the entire way back.

When they were just pulling into the station, the fact that Satoru's mood had been so quickly soured had started to bother him, and Akihiko asked, "What's wrong, Sato-san?"

"Huh?" He looked up, then turned his eyes away again, shaking his head. "Oh, it's nothing, Aki." The man's gaze flickered to the paperwork the hospital gave him just prior to their departure. "...Yeah, it's nothing. Don't worry about it..."

The bustle of people made it difficult for them to stick together, but Satoru held fast to Akihiko's hand, who led Miki close behind him the same way. Shinji just made sure to stick close by them, even if it meant having to shove or squeeze around a few people.

Before long, they had endured the tiring trip from the Iwatodai station to the plains outside of it, where the orphanage lied. Miki was falling asleep again and so Akihiko gave her a piggy-back ride part of the way there, until carrying the extra weight started to make him dizzy, and Shinji insisted that he take over. They gently transferred the girl from one back to the other so efficiently that they managed to avoid waking her up. Satoru brightened a little and congratulated their effective methods and teamwork for handling Miki.

Climbing the three wooden stairs that introduced them to Kawatani's front door step, Satoru knocked a few times and stepped inside, holding the door for the children following him. To his bafflement, Akihiko was greeted by some of the others in his faction - and even some in factions completely separate from his own - who were all worried about his welfare, asking him how things were and how he was feeling. He answered all of their questions as much as he could, all sheepishly, afterward trying to tell them to quiet down so that Miki didn't wake up. Shinji had already slipped past the crowd and into the sleeping room, though. He popped back out less than a minute later after retiring the girl to bed.

"Some dog showed up while you guys were gone," Natsuo was just telling him. "He was real friendly. The kids in Rikuto's group chased it off, though."

Shinji trotted over to stand juxtaposed to Akihiko. "A dog? What kind of dog?"

"Er, I'm not sure what breed it was. I'm not big on dogs or anything..." He was unable to help grinning a little, "Oh, I forgot, Shinji's our resident wild animal-tamer."

The brunette passed off that remark. "Why did they chase it off? Was it a stray?"

"Probably. It looked a little underfed. They were trying to play with it, but it was skittish around too many people. I imagine it's probably been on it's own for a while. I think they found it behind the building... it ran off toward Iwatodai."

Akihiko quickly picked up on Shinji's antsiness. "Why don't we go look for it?"

"Oh, no you don't," Natsuo pointed a scolding finger in the cinerious boy's direction, "If there's anywhere you should be going, it's to bed. Satoru says you shouldn't leave the orphanage for anything other than school until your injury is healed up."

"Wha-?" He blustered with indignance, "That's _totally_ unfair! It's going to take forever to heal! It won't hurt it one bit for me to go outside!"

"Do you honestly think we haven't known you long enough to tell how reckless you are?" Natsuo crossed his arms with a look of skepticism. "You'd have that thing reopened before you even made it off the front porch."

"I am not reckless!"

"How many times have you managed to skin yourself in the riverbed?"

"Hey, that's not...!"

"And you've fallen out of a tree... _how_ many times?"

"O-Okay, I... I'll stay out of the trees."

"And you just got hit by a _car_. I rest my case."

"The car totally wasn't my fault!"

"Was it the tree's fault for not catching you, too?"

Akihiko folded his arms and glared daggers at his senior. "...Maybe!"

Granted, this didn't phase Natsuo, who just folded his arms and pouted back. "It'll be over before you know it, I promise. We don't want you getting hurt worse."

Growling, the little one collapsed on the floor, arms folded, and refused to move when Natsuo nudged him with a foot. "This place is boring!"

"You'll still get to go to school in two days!" Natsuo threw his hands up with an exaggerated enthusiasm, "I know you're excited! Yayyy!"

Akihiko stuck his tongue out. "School is boring, too!"

At this childish display, Shinji finally committed the palm-to-face movement. "For Christ's sake, Aki, you're not three years old."

The silver-haired boy stuck his tongue out at him, too. This warranted an eyeroll.

"All right, well, I'm going to get you into bed." Akihiko whined a protest to this, but when further prompted, he gave in and picked himself back up to a stand. "You all managed to get out of going to school today, but you'll be going back on the 24th, since tomorrow is a holiday. Rest up and try to feel better before then." The older black-brunette turned his eyes then onto Shinji, the only one of the trio who had yet to retire. "What about you, Shinji? Are you going to get some rest, too? I know you didn't sleep much last night."

"Nah, I'll pass. Is Riyeko in the kitchen? Dinner is soon."

"Yeah, I think so." He and Akihiko headed toward the faction's sleeping room, where Miki had already been put to bed early. "Make sure to get some sleep later."

۞

Without his conscious thinking on it, his footsteps took him straight there. Through the dining room, around the various padded cushions there that were laid out for the children later, Shinji stepped barefoot over the cold floors and eased his way through the door to the kitchen, his gaze swiftly coming upon the familiar dark-brunette form of Riyeko. She turned her gaze onto him for just a second. She brightened, then, and gestured to the open counter next to her. "Gonna help me again tonight?"

"What are you cooking?" The brunette paused and tasted the air. "It smells like pork."

"It is! You're getting good at that." She brought a delicate hand onto the other side of the counter and slid across it a cookbook, which Shinji approached and peered just above the counter in order to see. "We're making ginger pork. I thought we could use a treat."

"Weren't you planning to make the treat on the holiday?" She looked back at the smirk that the brunette was giving her and giggled.

"Well, I got excited to make it! Don't complain!"

The boy pulled the cookbook just enough off the edge of the counter to pull it down and flip it so that he could read the pages, then let it slap back onto the flat surface while he departed for the nearby pantry. As usual, it was uncomfortably empty, save for much rice and various broths. If there was anything Shinji was tired of, it was soup, but more often than not, that was all the orphanage could afford to feed them.

He was into the motions of cooking again before long. After picking out all the ingredients that the recipe called for, all of which was bought recently with their limited funding, he sat next to the girl on a stool he pulled up and watched her work over the stove. She asked him to read the cookbook instructions to her from time to time, which he did. In fact, it was likely because of that task that he had learned to pick up reading faster than some of the other kids his age. Riyeko had found it helpful of him.

When they were done preparing the food - which was shortly after the brunette arrived, as the meal didn't take much prepping - they had to make more, enough to feed all the hungry mouths of the orphanage. He helped prepare some of the other ingredients this time, such as cutting the pork or trying his hand at concocting the marinade. Dinner was soon finished. Permitting Shinji to take a bite or two extra from what was prepared, a privilege offered to him only because he was such a superb helper, the others were called in for dinner and everyone was seated in the dining room. Shinji took his place in the corner, empty where Aki and Miki usually occupied the cushions closest to him. He looked down at his tauntingly small serving of the meal he had helped toil to create, heard his stomach growl, and slouched a little under the temptation to consume it.

But he didn't. He couldn't. There was someone else who needed this food more than he did. And he couldn't take Aki or Miki's servings - just because they weren't there, he would never think to deny them food as thoughtlessly as he would himself. They would need something to eat later, and he wanted them to wake up with a serving ready.

Natsuo quickly noticed his apparent loss of appetite. "Aren't you hungry, Shinji?"

The brunette sighed, and shook his head. "I don't know. I can't stand the thought of eating all of a sudden." He further improvised and added, "I've got a lot on my mind, is all. ...You think I could take it outside with me?"

"You want to eat outside?" The black-brunette gave him a puzzled look.

Shinji deliberately turned his head away. "I think I need some air, that's all."

"Well, I don't see why not. Make sure you come back before nightfall. We have enough to worry about with Aki being hurt," The teen took in another bite of his meal, which he swallowed just as quickly. "Try to be careful. I'll come find you if you don't come back."

"Heh, I don't need you to come find me. I'll be back before dark, I promise." The brunette heaved himself to his feet, taking his bowl and spoon with him. "I'm not a kid. I can take care of myself better than Aki can."

"How is that supposed to be an accomplishment?"

...Right. Good point. "Shut up. You know what I mean."

Natsuo suppressed a bought of laughter, knowing that it would mean the loss of his present mouthful of food. "Yeah, yeah. Try not to get into any trouble."

۞

Shinji stepped down the flight of concrete stairs, feeling the dirt and grass cushion underneath his feet, pressing on his sore heels. They were calloused and worn from the amount of walking he was used to - walking into the woods, walking to school, walking back from school, walking to the beach - but they had yet to completely desensitize. The aroma of the food in his hands was a constant reminder of his own hunger, sending his stomach into fits of growling demands which he attempted to quiet by clenching his fingers over it.

He knew he was hungry, damn it. He didn't get a lot of food to eat to begin with. But as hungry as he was, he kept reminding himself that it was not nearly as much as that dog must have already gone through. Someone else needed this food more than he did.

Now... if _he _was a dog, where would he go from here?

The brunette's mind clicked. _Natsuo said it was behind the orphanage. I'll follow the footprints._ Turning, he immediately started off to the back of the building, maintaining some degree of nonchalance. He didn't want anyone thinking that he was trying to help the dog. If they did, they would probably deny him the opportunity to feed it. He had always resented that about some of the others he lived with, their constant attempts to enforce the idea in his brain that he was more important than any other animal in need. It was bullshit, if you asked him. A dog was as much of a living thing as any person. Hell, the dog was probably more loyal and well-meaning than some of the scumbag humans out there, anyway.

The back of the orphanage was rather dusty. That was where they kept their trash, and so there was a door from the end of the kitchen that led out here; aside from the garbage cans and miscellaneous litter was a dirt path, and a bench that rested on the far side, a place to sit and rest their tired and overworked feet. Here, Shinji could decipher many scuffs in the dirt from human footprints, but it took him a while to locate any modeling a canine's. He did eventually, encrusted with mud from the mutt's foot. He sank a little inwardly when imagining how far the dog must have been forced to walk to get here.

Seeing that the blurred pawprints did, in fact, point in the direction of Iwatodai, Shinji held his bowl of food close and proceeded to follow them across the plains. Fortunately, seeing as the outskirts of Iwatodai weren't too far from the orphanage, the dog would have probably fled into the urban area in order to escape notice. But once Shinji arrived there as well, he would be completely clueless as to the dog's whereabouts. Should he try visiting the pound? He felt his heart sink at the thought. That dog had no hope of survival if it had been taken into the pound. He sourly recalled the time that Satoru had told Shinji that he had to take one of his rescue dogs to the pound, and so he did... but little did he know, the pound would euthanize him within the next week.

The memory was so embittering that he forced it away from his mind.

If the Earth under his feet in the plains had added to the consistent soreness of his feet, the concrete only worsened their plight. Still, Shinji pushed on, walking the cement pathways with his eyes in constant movement, in search for the mutt that had so recently been in the area. He hoped it was still nearby, he honestly did. The food in his bowl had long since gotten cold, and the sun was beginning to set, stretching its blanket of reds and oranges over the blue-indigo sky. The scent of it would be enough to attract the dog, wouldn't it? ...The brunette bit his lip, and unknowing of what else to do, he started to call out for the animal. Anyone who passed by and questioned him with a puzzled glance was rewarded with a defensive glare, which often sufficed to keep them away.

Hours later, and he had yet to see a single dog.

"Here, boy!" The brunette stifled a cough, his voice becoming hoarse with overuse and his inevitable fatigue. "I... I brought food..."

Still, nothing. Shinji sat himself on the edge of the street, setting down the bowl next to him and resting his head on his hands. _I guess they chased him off pretty far._ The brunette released a frustrated sigh, permitting his insisting eyes a minute to close. He was tired... but he had to walk all the way back to the orphanage, empty-handed, before he could sleep...

The street lights were beginning to flicker by now. Shinji opened his eyes again and watched as they each came to life, their illumination so weak in comparison to the sun that would soon have completely retreated beyond the horizon. He yawned and admired it for a few minutes - it really was pretty, all the vivid colors, albeit the sun itself was a little hard on his eyes - before he felt something brush against his back.

That was bad. Shinji could never accustom himself to having someone behind him; being snuck up on was something he had just instinctively hated his whole life. In school, when he could help it, he kept his back to the wall and chose seats at the end of the classroom. He just didn't trust people - _anything_, really - behind him. So he jumped up to his feet, his heart racing, and clenched a fist in preparation to retaliate against whoever it was... but his hand fell a moment later when he recognized the wolfish form, and the creature's explicit interest in the bowl rather than him.

It didn't even hesitate. As soon as it located the food, it buried its muzzle into the dish and breathed in the food with a few bites. Shinji paused, dumbfounded, before that fell for a staggering relief and a chuckle. "Well, you're hungry, aren't you?"

The dog stopped eating when his hand touched to its head. He realized that it was probably scared that he would take the bowl away, but as he continued to pat the dog's matted coat, it slowly relaxed, wagging its tail, and continued running is flat tongue against the bottom of the bowl to retrieve anything it might have previously missed.

He took that respite to look over the dog. In all honesty, it looked like it was well-bred. An akita inu, perhaps. Its - his - coat was a vivid mesh of oranges and blacks and whites, a 'brindle' colored coat that gave him the appearance of the autumn season. He, like Natsuo said, looked greatly underfed and was as skittish as he imagined the dog would likely be. But, that said, he seemed more tame than some other dogs Shinji had encountered, too.

The dog lifted his muzzle from the bowl not a moment after he realized that it was completely emptied. The look he gave the brunette seemed to plead, 'Can I have more?' But Shinji had nothing more to give him. In fact, at the mere thought of more food, of the meal he had gotten next to nothing of, the boy's stomach viciously growled and he again clutched his fingers on it. _I'll be fine,_ he insisted to himself. _Not like I can't go without one night of dinner. There'll be breakfast in the morning._

This relief was quickly discredited; then, what would the dog eat?

Shinji shut his eyes and slouched, dispirited.

۞

When Akihiko woke up, it was bright and early the following day. Miki was still out cold. She had a tendency to oversleep when permitted, so he rolled out of bed, careful not to wake her, and started his day. Before anything, he reaffirmed Shinji was home by checking for his presence in the bed next to them - once he had, he made his way to the washroom, where he took a much-needed shower. Just before leaving, he dug out another square, white bandage from the medicine cabinet to patch back over his stitched wound to cover it back up and therefore maintain the illusion of near-instant recovery.

From there, he realized he had little to do. A day of complete idleness, spent locked up in the orphanage when he would often make full use of his holidays. ...It was easy to guess, then, that once Miki and Shinji woke up later that morning, that Akihiko conspired with them to sneak out and go to the beach. Miki was concerned for her brother, but upon his insisting that he was fine - a point supported by the fact that he had little visible injury to show for it, and her automatic trust in the boy whom she so greatly looked up to - she was happy to have him along. Shinji openly disagreed but said that as long as Aki thought he was fine, what he did was up to him. Shinji and Miki both agreed to take care of him under the circumstance that anything happened to him, and made him promise to be careful.

Their trip to the decided location went smoothly enough. When reaching Port Island, they all managed to scrounge up enough money to buy an ice cream cone, which was shared between the three of them prior to walking the remaining distance to the beach. When there, they played and swam as they often did when there. Other children and adults were also present, but the trio kept to a mainly deserted strip of the beach that they had more or less claimed as their own after their many visits to the area. Things were fine this way, enjoying the sun and the sand - even grabbing a few slices of watermelon from a nearby friendly beach-goer - until Akihiko tried his hand at swimming for the first time that day. He was hesitant to do it at first, but given how much he enjoyed swimming, he couldn't resist.

As it turned out, he would regret it. When dipping into the ocean water, his wound was irritated by the saline water the minute he sank under the surface. Reduced to a screaming fit of agony on the beach shore, with Miki and Shinji both fretting considerably over his condition, they ran him home as fast as they could. But to make matters worse, Satoru had plunged into a fit at Akihiko's absence. Having told him repeatedly that he was restricted to the orphanage until his injury healed, his sneaking out warranted the first real, verging on violent tongue-lashing that Akihiko - and the other two, for that matter - had ever received in their entire time of living in the orphanage. The boy could not count the amount of cuss words slung at him, nor could he resist succumbing to tears when Satoru went on to say that he had other children to take care of, that Akihiko was becoming a selfish, reckless brat to be so inconsiderate of the others' feelings, and that the medical bill that the orphanage was required to pay to accomodate the care Akihiko had needed might be enough to half-starve everyone in the facility for the next six months. Shinji paled at this. Miki was too busy crying as a result of her brother having fallen into a hysterical mess of sobs himself, and chased after him when he fled the orphanage building to the local riverbed.

At the riverbed, he was still a mess. A wet, crying, snot-nosed mess, and he found himself wishing that he could run away from Miki, too, whom he knew did not want to see him like this. He was supposed to be the big, strong one, who always did everything right. He was supposed to be the example, the support, the one she could always count on. And yet here he was. He was hurt, he was crying, and felt as though he had just been called the biggest fuck-up of the year by the man who inhabited that place of 'father' in Akihiko's mind.

Nonetheless, Miki was doing all she could to comfort him. "Akinii, he didn't mean all those things. He still loves you. Please, don't cry. He was just mad, you know? He's just... he was just worried about you! You were gone all day, and..."

The platinum boy couldn't stand the thought of Satoru right now. He could hardly stand the thought of Shinji, or Miki, or anyone. The urge to shove his sister off of him and run, even from her, was so strong in his mind, and yet not the most extreme of his moods could ever make him be harsh with her. As she clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder, her shivering body betraying the upset that he had caused her, he knew that she was only doing all she could to make him feel better. She was trying to repay all the times that he had been there for her; she was trying to be the same strong, supportive presence that he had always been when she had needed a shoulder to cry on. She was trying to give back to him what was his job to always give her. He was a mess... and Miki, of all people, was trying to help him mend himself back together. If he had screwed up in everything else, couldn't he at least still be strong for his sister? If nothing else, couldn't he at least keep her safe and happy...?

"I'm... I'm okay, Miki." The redness of his eyes, the tears and the utter wet stickiness of his face all begged to differ, but his voice was returning to a normal pitch. "I'll be okay. You should... um, go back inside. I'm sure they're serving dinner about now."

She held his sleeve, for he wouldn't let her hold his hands, moistened far too much by his tears. "I don't wanna go back inside without you."

"...Maybe I should be by myself for a little while."

"B-But..." The girl bit her lip, standing from her place next to the boy and wandering closer down to the river. There had to be something here that she could use to cheer him up, right? She sifted around the various pebbles and the moss that collected at the bank, locating a long, slender stick. With a smile, she splashed into the shallow, weak current and carved 'I Akinii' in the sand that occupied the bottom. "Hey, Akinii, look!"

He looked over, more or less to humor her. She beamed and looked back down, only to see that the current had swept away part of her message. "W-Wait, I have to redraw it."

By the time she did, he had lost interest.

She sank a little, but went on for the sake of trying to find something else to cheer him up. Wracking her brain for something, anything, she spotted another stick caught in the pebbles on the bank, and when she fished it out, she stuck both twigs up against her head, above her pigtails as though imitating antlers. "Look! I'm a reindeer!"

His eyes went to the ground, and he started crying again.

Miki bit her lip hard enough to make it sting. What was wrong? Why was he crying again? She raced up the bank to him, half-drenched in water from the river, and placed one of the twigs next to him while carving a small pound symbol in the dirt. "L-Look, we can... we can play tic-tac-toe!" She felt her own voice weakening. "Y-You can go first..."

But Akihiko shook his head, hardly able to muster words. "No, Miki."

The look on her face - as if he had just openly rejected her - was horrid, and he couldn't bring himself to look at it. His voice almost cracked under the pressure of speaking after it. "I-I just... I can't... I need some time alone, okay?"

_I'm sorry. I can't be happy for you right now. I'm not strong enough..._

Admitting such a thing brought such a sense of defeat to the boy that he almost felt himself beginning to cry again. He was... he was so _stupid_. Satoru was right. He wasn't good for anything. If he couldn't even be strong for Miki, what good was he?

Her fingers slowly slipped away from his sleeve. "...O-Okay, Akinii."

She stood up, disappearing into the void of silence behind him.

۞

Needless to say, Miki herself was crying by the time she got up to the orphanage's front doorstep. She collapsed next to the door of the entrance, burying her face in her knees and smothering whatever sobs might have escaped her lips the best she could when so deeply hurt. It wasn't just that she could do absolutely nothing for her brother - it was all the things Satoru had said; how reckless Akihiko had been, how he wouldn't be worth it if he just ran off and killed himself with all his foolishness, and seeing the anger written on the man's face. How could he be so horrible to Akihiko? Even given what her brother had done, did it really warrant such stinging words, such a frightening anger?

The only thing that interrupted her thoughts was the sound of footsteps amidst the crickets, at which she looked up to see Shinji, of all people.

There was an empty bowl in his hands, likely having contained his dinner.

"...Miki?" His voice was muted in the dark. His brown eyes seemed to blend into the darkness of the night, undetectable. "Are you all right?"

She was hurt because Akihiko had asked her to leave. Because she had not only been unable to do anything to help him, but because for the first time, her presence hadn't been enough to comfort him. Because her being near him hurt her more than it helped. Because her brother was upset, crying, and he couldn't be there to hold her hand and tell her it was okay - not when he was the one who was hurt. It was as if all the dark, hated feelings that she had felt when he was in the hospital, wounded, had all returned, only with a sting that was reinforced moreso by the fact that Akihiko had drawn the blood himself.

But she knew that was selfish. He couldn't always be there for her. Shouldn't she have realized that by now? Shouldn't she have realized that one day, he would grow up, and find a girl that he loved more than her, leaving her behind to fend for herself? Shouldn't she learn to be strong and independent, like him? Shouldn't she be able to walk the world of threats and upsets and danger without her brother always there to hold her hand?

Still, she could not lie to Shinji. "I... I don't know."

"Hey. He'll be all right." The brunette set the bowl down next to himself, reclining at her side. "Satoru-san was just angry. ...He probably said things he didn't mean to say, and he'll probably apologize later. But Aki has always been reckless, and someday he's got to learn that if he doesn't stop to think about shit before he does it, it might get him killed. Maybe getting yelled at is what he needs. Maybe it'll make him think more about what he does, and how it'll affect everyone, instead of just what it'll do to him."

It upset her to think how many times she had verged on tears lately. So many times, recently, that she had seen Akihiko get hurt, physically and emotionally. He was going through so much, and yet she could only think about herself...

She couldn't bring herself to be expansive. "...Yeah."

"I'll talk to him for you, okay?" The brunette stood back up, offering a strong hand which she took and faltered a little when he bounced her up. The breath huffed out of her when she felt his arms fold around her, his head resting on her shoulder, the strength behind his embrace squeezing her in an uncomfortably tight yet wholly warming way. He released her not long after, smiling and ruffling her hair a little.

She was struck silent for a minute. However familiar she and Akihiko were with Shinji, he had... never really hugged her before. At least, not as meaningfully as he did now. He was quiet, almost distant, rough and well-intentioned but awkward in his affection. Such an open display was rare, but the sincerity of it touched her, and made her smile.

"He'll be the same old Aki we know by the end of the night."

Miki sniffled and wiped an arm across her eyes. "...Thanks, Shinii-chan."

"Now, get inside and eat. Dinner is going to get cold."

۞

No more than ten minutes after Miki had left, Akihiko found himself back in the same teary-eyed state that had visited him when he first came to the riverbed. He rewarded himself by pointing out that he wasn't actually crying at this point, but he was sure he looked pitiful enough to discredit whatever pride he had in that, anyway.

The voice he heard soon after was not one he readily expected. "Aki?"

It was Shinji. Of all the times Akihiko had run out to this place on his own - whether it be to escape the orphanage, calm down, or just to do his homework - he had never had Shinji come after him to check on him. He was... surprised.

Embarrassed, he tried wiping the remaining moisture from his face. "Sh-Shinji?" His voice wavered some. "...I wasn't expecting you to come here."

"Well, I know you got pretty upset back there."

Akihiko hugged into himself, sniffling a little and keeping his eyes strictly on the gleaming surface of the river that rushed past them.

"...Chichi - ah, Satoru - said some harsh stuff back there."

"He was right," The younger of them shook his head and tried to wipe his eyes again, hoping to let no tears escape, "Just like all those other kids at school. They always talk about how we don't know how to feel or control ourselves like normal kids just since we don't have parents... maybe they're right. Even Chichi called me a fuck-up."

Shinji's body slouched moreso than it already was. "He didn't mean that, Aki, and you know it. Those kids at school don't know what they're talking about. Just 'cause you don't have parents doesn't mean shit - you do better than lots of kids in our class."

Akihiko didn't say much of anything in reply.

"...I know nothing I say is going to help very much. But sometimes you make mistakes, and people are going to get mad at you for it. Shit happens. All you can really do is pick yourself back up and try not to mess up again, right? So you'll screw up again in the future... it's all about being able to pick yourself back up and learn from it."

He sniffled a little. "...You think so, Shinji?"

"Yeah, I do. Where do you think crying your eyes out is going to get you?"

Akihiko laughed nervously when remembering again how pathetic he must've looked. "You're right..." He tried to restrain another sniffle, "Thanks, Shinji."

"No problem." The brunette stood, and helped his friend to his feet. Granted, he used Akihiko's wrist rather than his soaked hand. "We should get back to the orphanage now. Miki's already inside. Dinner is going to get cold if we don't hurry."

They both nodded agreement to one another, and started on their way back toward the place they knew so fondly as 'home', following the dirt trail paved by past generations from it to the riverbed where they had been. But a final, singular question presented itself in the younger boy's brain. He could not resist asking, "What could I learn from today, Shinji?"

"If you died, who would take care of Miki?"

The realization twinged his heart in his chest. "...I-I didn't realize-"

"Hurting yourself is the same as hurting everyone around you. Remember that."


	5. Chapter 5

From then on, Akihiko tried to take Shinji's advice to heart. He was right; what was whining and crying about the things that happened going to get him? So he might still get upset sometimes... but he had to realize that it wasn't going to help him, and instead, he had to pick himself back up and keep going. That was the way to work things through. Shinji told him so. And if there was an opinion Akihiko valued, it was Shinji's.

The next day was quiet and stiff in the faction, at least between the trio and their surrogate parent figure. He sent them off with Natsuo for the morning with little more than 'have a good day', and they rode on the train to the school in relative silence. Akihiko had made sure to rebandage his injury before departing, something he was starting to make into a habit. His headache had died down, and his injury was less red and throbbing than it had been the previous day - thoughts of this, as well as his fleeting interest in the ocean as they passed it, occupied him. Natsuo could tell that there was a discomfort shared among the trio and sighed, looking up from the homework he was attempting to complete before school.

"...He can be harsh sometimes, yeah?"

All three of them lowered their eyes.

"It's really because he's under a lot of stress. It isn't you guys' fault. ...I mean, you shouldn't have been sneaking out. That's what got you hurt in the first place, and then you went and did it again the day after Aki was released from the hospital. Before that, you were just like every other kid in the faction who snuck out for some thrills... he had no real reason to get angry, just reason to worry. But the medical bill from the hospital was ridiculous, too, and the other surrogates are still pissed off with him about that..." The black-brunette shook his head as if to free it from those lingering thoughts, "He's just got a lot on his mind. He doesn't love you guys any less than he did before."

Miki flexed her hands in and out. "...Does he really love us?"

Natsuo looked choked for a minute. "He... of course he does. He loves all of us."

But Shinji knew better. His voice was bitter when he corrected, "Not any more than every other kid he's forced to take care of."

The black-brunette submitted. "...That's the sad truth of being an orphan, Shinji."

Akihiko had never felt so alone in his life.

"But that doesn't mean he doesn't care about you. He does. He's raised you guys from the time you were really little, and he knows that you're good, well-meaning kids. He gets pissed at me, too, you know. He's even had to thwack me a few times." He laughed half-heartedly, "You have to admit, we have it a lot better than kids who have not only lost their parents, but don't have a home to live in, or an adult to look after them."

So Natsuo had a point. But that didn't make it any easier to accept.

They continued to ride the train in their silence, and when they had arrived to the school, they all departed and wished each other a good day in school. Akihiko and Shinji walked Miki to her class, where she hugged her older brother and ran inside with tears in her eyes - Akihiko's heart went out to her in all the recent suffering he must have caused her. Shinji was less animated today, but told Akihiko that she would be all right; they'd see her at lunch, and the school day would pass soon. This week would be a short one.

That being said, it seemed to last forever. Why, Akihiko hadn't a clue, but every day ended with Shinji and Miki having fallen into a mutual silence, their minds occupied with things that they refused to share with him or each other. Shinji would disappear in the evenings and was slowly becoming lethargic, falling asleep earlier and earlier in the evening, while Miki's trademark cheerfulness was slowly ebbing off for a quiet, distant shadow of her former personality. This change in his friends only furthered the feeling of loneliness that had nested itself in his heart ever since the start of that week. Satoru was cold, and the other children of the faction were not seriously involved in nor cared of Akihiko's affairs. For the first time, Akihiko found himself going on walks on his own, wandering along the riverbed or perching in trees where he could collect his thoughts. He never went too far, or got himself hurt. He made special care not to do so after being so deeply upset by Satoru's outburst earlier that week. But he pondered and pondered, wondering why it was that he could be so lonely when he was surrounded by the same people and places that he had been for years.

On that particular night, Akihiko found himself out later than usual. It was some twenty minutes after his bedtime, and he knew he needed to go back inside before his absence warranted concern. Swinging his legs over the edge of the tree branch where he was perched, he was just about to let himself fall down to a strong landing when he heard something stirring in the grasses and foliage beneath him. He pulled his legs back up, listening past the crickets and cicadas who filled the night air with their symphony of sound, trying to pick out the source of the newcoming footsteps.

"Here, boy. I have some more food tonight." Akihiko instantly recognized the voice as Shinji's, from familiarity alone. "Sorry I'm a bit late. I had a harder time slipping out."

There was more shuffling in the dried grasses below. The boy strained to hear another voice, to find out who it was Shinji spoke to, but he heard nothing aside from several clinks on the bowl that usually indicated eating. Was Shinji secretly meeting someone out here? Certainly not someone else in the orphanage, right? Was it Miki? Was it someone he didn't know, a friend Shinji made from school?

Just a few minutes later, he heard more movement. Shinji stood back up.

"...I'm going to have to go a little earlier tonight, okay?"

A hoarse whimper followed Shinji's backward footsteps, toward the orphanage. Akihiko blinked in surprise. A dog? Shinji had gotten a dog?

"I'm sorry, Haru-chan. My brain's kinda fuzzy, yeah? I have to get back before-"

Akihiko, the intelligent boy he was, snapped a smaller branch in his attempts to maneuver toward the ground. He swallowed and sat still, frozen.

Shinji had fallen quiet, too. So had the dog. "...Is someone there?"

But... why should he be scared of being caught? He wasn't doing anything wrong. If anything, Shinji was the one who shouldn't be out. Satoru had restricted him to the sleeping room for the night, due to the fact that Shinji had lost so much energy that he almost collapsed on the walk home today. He had been tremoring, too. Most of them thought he was beginning to come down with something - which was odd, considering Shinji actually had one of the most resilient immune systems among them.

So Akihiko slipped from the branch, landing with a crunch in the leaves. The dog froze and the fur along its spine rose; the brunette, virtually blind to him at the moment, squinted and tried to identify him. "What are you doing up, Shinji?"

"Aki?" The brunette's surprise was subdued. "What are you-" He paused when realizing Akihiko had already inquired the same thing of him, first, and sighed, "I came to feed Hideharu. I need to get back before Chichi notices. I'm tired, anyway..."

He was still trembling. The dog whimpered and nuzzled his leg.

Akihiko's mind clicked. "Is this the stray dog that Natsuo was talking about?"

"Yeah." A few hoarse coughs. "I went to find him... and he followed me back."

"Wait, you've been feeding him your food all this time?"

Shinji grimaced and looked away.

"Shinji, you're starving yourself!"

"I still eat at school. It's just been... less, than usual."

"I was starting to wonder why you started asking everyone for their leftover food." Akihiko bit his lip. How could he not've realized this sooner? Shinji had been starving - that's why he didn't care when asking for food warranted more insults regarding his heritage, or lack thereof. "Look, I know you want to help the dog, but you can't possibly-"

"And let him starve?" Akihiko flinched back from him. "I'm not going to do that!"

The dog - Hideharu - reclined on his haunches, his ears lowered. He whimpered menially between the two boys, likely unsure as to what to do.

"Why don't we ask if Chichi will let us keep him at the orphanage?"

"You really think they'll let him? They'll just take him to the pound."

Akihiko couldn't argue with this case, either. The last dog Shinji had found was sent straight to the pound, and he could remember walking there every day with Shinji to visit him... but not even a week later, they were sent back out under the premise that the dog had 'found a better home'. They knew it was a lie; the dog was dead. But that didn't mean that coming across his body in the garbage on their way out of the back of the shelter was any easier. That was probably one of the few times he had seen Shinji break down and cry.

The boy was at a loss. More than anything, he couldn't understand why Shinji had hidden this from him. "...Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

"You just got out of the hospital. You need your strength. I knew that if I told you, you'd be giving all your food up to him, too, and I didn't want you to get sick."

"But if we split up the amount of food between us, you won't have to go hungry." His eyes went down to the form of the canine, to which he smiled and held out a hand. Hideharu gave him a few attentive sniffs and his tail began to sweep across the ground, standing and accepting a few pets from the platinum boy. Nightfall and the shadow of the trees made it difficult to get a clear picture of the dog, but Akihiko's unadjusted eyes could at least make out the patches of color for which Shinji likely named him. You know, he'd always wanted a dog. They were so lively - they were loyal and built to protect, too. They could go on walks with him! They could take him to the beach, and Akihiko could race him and everything!

If Shinji said anything to protest this, then - which he did - Akihiko was oblivious. "Hey, have you taught him anything? How about sit? Sit, Haru-chan!"

The dog tilted his head and panted, his tongue lolling out from his teeth-lined jaw.

"Well, okay. We'll have to work on that. But, uh... hmm. Oh, we should teach him how to play dead! Or how to high-five! You can teach dogs how to do that, right?"

"You're not listening to me at all, are you?"

Akihiko looked up and smiled. "Not really."

Shinji rolled his eyes. "Why do I even ask?"

۞

Winter was coming. The cold was settling in earlier this year, seeing as it was only September. Miki could tell, because she was starting to get goosebumps despite lying in bed, snuggling herself underneath the blankets. The spot next to her was cold, empty, serving as a constant reminder of the fact that Akihiko hadn't returned and retired to bed yet.

The moonlight flittered through the window of the sleeping room, bathing it in a pale, ethereal glow that only seemed to emphasize the loneliness in her heart. Her hand - dainty, small, as it had been called - went out toward that light, clawing through the beams and creating shadowy patterns across the gentle curves of her cheeks as well as breaking up its glow across her extravagant, shoulder-length, silvery locks.

Little did she know, her feelings were shared by both of the boys she held so dear to herself. What was it that had caused this rift? Perhaps there was not a singular answer to that question. Shinji was coming to realize his place as the 'extra' to their circle, as the one set aside from the tight bond the siblings shared; Miki saw the two boys, the way her brother so admired Shinji, and envied the closeness they had whereas she was separated from them day after day for a reason as trivial as her age, being a year younger than them; Akihiko, then, saw the way both of them were withdrawing away from one another, and found himself unable to explain, much less understand, what was amiss.

But Miki - no, she didn't think to tell her brother what secluded feelings had been fostered in her heart. She had long started to wonder, for what reason did he hurt himself to protect her? The memory of him, pinned underneath that vehicle, bleeding and delirious and near-death, was forever scarred into her. What if he hadn't made it? Would she be the one responsible for his death? If she hadn't been there, he wouldn't have jumped down. He wouldn't have put himself in harm's way, and so he would never have been hurt. And yet as much as she resented her dependence on her brother, she realized just as much that she needed it. These recent weeks of being teased and shunned by her classmates, who had come to realize how weak she was in his absence, had only made her yearn even more for his protection. He would set them straight if only he knew! But... she had to stop depending on him. Because she did, for everything. Her classmates knew that, and exploited that. She wanted to be strong, like him, like Shinji... but trying to withstand all of it on her own, without breathing a word to the boy she had shared everything with for her entire life, was so much more difficult than that. Every time he was near, the words pressed at her throat. _'Please! Make them stop!'_ She shut her eyes. _'Don't leave me! You're the only friend I have!'_

Tears swelled against her eyelids. But she kept them in, trying to calm her unsteady breathing, and reached out within herself for something like peace of mind.

Minutes before she fell asleep in this fragile and restless state of mind, she heard the door to the sleeping room click open. She opened one of her eyes, on which those same tears had dried, prohibited from escape; she saw the form of two boys whom she easily recognized, and gently sealed her eyes back shut. She heard them shuffle about, walking to their respective beds - Shinji's being nearby, and Akihiko's being the very one Miki herself still occupied - and shuffling themselves underneath the covers. Her brother presumed she was already asleep, she was sure. Once comfortable on the mattress, he turned his back to her and began to drift off into the nuances of sleep.

She opened her eyes again and turned her head to look at him. When they were younger - they had always shared the same bed, because each one's presence comforted the other in those years - he was much more open to the idea of closeness... as they had gotten older, though, he started to wedge a distance between them, and always kept his back to her. Why? ...She wasn't sure. She didn't think much of it the first few times. But now, here she was, looking back and wondering why he had revoked that closeness with her...

It was just because they were getting older, wasn't it?

It wasn't because he loved her any less than he did back then?

And then again she clenched her teeth and shook her head, wondering how she could be so deluded. This was the same boy who risked his life to save her. Of course he cared about her. Then, why was it that he felt so far away...?

"I love you, Akinii," She murmured under her breath, turning her own back to him, balling the blanket in her palms. "I'll always love you, no matter what..."


	6. Chapter 6

That next day started as usual. Miki packed her daily supplies in her backpack, waited for Akihiko and Shinji to do the same, and they boarded the bus. She left her sketchbook of stickers back at the orphanage. She hadn't been getting any stickers lately - as she got older, the teachers were less and less liberal about handing them out. She figured there was no point in bringing it if she never had any new stickers for it.

Akinii and Shinji were talking. "Did you eat breakfast this morning?"

"I only gave him half of it, all right?"

"Good. I gave him my whole bowl, so he should be well-fed now."

"What the hell, Aki! I told you that you had to eat _some_ of it!"

"I'm just making up for lost time, okay?"

She reached up, pulling weakly on the boy's sleeve. "What's happening?"

Akihiko looked toward her, smiling and bringing one of his own hands atop her head. "It'll be a surprise!" His attentions went back to the brunette, "Can we show her tonight, after we get back from school? I bet she would love to see-"

Shinji scowled, "Shut up, before someone hears you."

The girl relaxed her fingers on her brother's uniform, lowering her line of sight back to the floor of the train as it rolled over the tracks underneath them. _It's all right if you don't want to tell me,_ She bemoaned silently. _You could have just said so._

Departing the train, she followed in the footsteps of her brother, sticking close to his side as was habit. They walked down the path leading to the school, up the stairwell, and walked through the glass doors, all the same as they did every day, and Miki bid the two boys farewell as they went in the opposite direction to their separate class.

That feeling of loneliness swept over her, making her cold to the point of shivering by the time she reached her classroom door. But she stopped there, poised herself, and stepped in, doing her best to act as though she hadn't a care in the world.

Her teacher greeted her. "Good morning, Miki-chan."

"Good morning, Amigawa-sensei," She returned, moving her way through the rows of desks to her assigned place. She set her backpack down beside her, fidgeting with her hands - a habit shared by her and her older brother - while she awaited class to start.

When it did, it, too, was routine. Her class reviewed the mathematical equations she had been taught in previous years, and they paired up to practice them. Miki was paired with a friendlier partner today. She was a girl named Koume, who she had yet to meet - which wasn't unusual, given her shyness, and overall reluctance to interact with her classmates. Lunch was mid-day, and she ate with Akihiko and Shinji, as usual. Both of them ate quicker than usual, something that had become normal for the brunette during the last week or so, but was a new development for her brother. In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd say they weren't getting as much food judging by their ravenous appetites.

Regardless, her class was released for recess after lunch. It was separate from her brother's, so she bid him and Shinji farewell and wandered off to the far-most swings, where she often found herself sitting and kicking her feet in the sand. She had nothing else to do, after all. The other children in her class refused any attempts she made at making friends, and quite frankly, she was too shy to approach most of them.

But today was different.

She was approached by the same girl, Koume, from earlier. "Hi, Miki-chan."

Miki was unable to hide the surprise in her tone. "Koume-chan?" She shrank down and averted her eyes to her left, away from the newcoming female. "H-Hi."

The raven-haired female plopped herself in the swing next to Miki's. She, too, was quiet, until she finally mustered, "Naomi-chan is mean, huh?"

Naomi-chan. That very name made Miki sting with anger.

"I was always told I shouldn't talk to the kids from Kawatani, but... after seeing how mean Naomi-chan and the rest of them have been to you... Momma said-" The girl gasped a little, interrupting herself mid-sentence, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot that you don't have-"

"It's okay," Miki clenched her fingers around the chain that suspended her swing. "I don't mind. I never knew my Momma. So it... it doesn't bother me too much."

"W-Well, um..." The girl hopped off of the swing again, walking the rest of the way up to her silver-haired counterpart. For the first time, Miki looked fully in her direction, and noticed the small rabbit doll that was being held out to her. "I wanted to give you this."

The girl locked up. "Y-You... you're giving me this?"

"It's my favorite bunny doll. It always makes me happy when I'm sad, so, I wanted to share it with you. I know you... must not have a lot of toys, so... I just thought you might like it," The girl smiled nervously, "until you get your own, you know?"

More than anything, she was stunned. She tried watching Koume's expression for a change, for it to fall to something more like mocking rather than this... genuine friendliness, but it never came. She reached out and touched her hand to the doll, slightly worn but still soft to the touch. When Miki took both hands to it, Koume released it, encouraging the silvery female to take it. She did, and with a smile so wide it made her cheeks burn; she cuddled the doll against her chest, struggling not to cry.

"...Thank you so much, Koume-chan."

"It's okay! I thought you might need a friend," The girl swayed on her feet, her face brightening at the genuine bittersweet happiness that came to form Miki's expression. "My best friend Yuna-chan isn't here today. But as soon as she gets back, I'll introduce you guys!"

Miki forced herself to speak, regardless of her quivering voice. "That'd be great!"

So that afternoon, when school let out and she met up with Akihiko and Shinji like she always did, she boarded the train with beaming cheer.

۞

Evening came quickly that day, stretching a vast sea of stars above the heads of the trio as they detoured on their walk back home from school. The sky was still slightly pink with the remaining sunlight that gradually reclined past the horizon, but it was dark enough that Miki asked if she could hold her brother's hand so as to ensure she was still with him. He gladly obliged to this. For now, they were leading her down the Kawatani riverbed, a place that she had visited many times, toward the wooded area nearby; both boys seemed excited about something - Shinji more subdued, but she could tell that even he was, too - but they wouldn't tell her what it was. All they told her is that she would love it.

Coming into a narrow clearing, specifically absent of too many trees whilst still being encircled by them to create a sort of comforting, womb-like sanctuary, carpetted with the autumn hues of dead leaves and sprinkled with the sparing light that glowed through the tree branches, Akihiko stood still at her side and Shinji proceeded to wander forward, calling for someone. Something. "Here, boy! Hideharu! Come and meet Miki!"

Something moved in the undergrowth. Miki tensed and clutched at her brother's hand, squeezing the doll with her other - an object with which she refused to be parted since the moment it was given to her - and looked up to him, only to see that he looked much more ecstatic than worried. What was it they were showing her? Did they make a new friend outside of the orphanage? Her eyes lowered back to the place where she had first detected movement, only to feel her heart skip in her chest at the sight of a beautiful dog materializing from the mesh of browns, reds, oranges, that dominated the forest.

"Doggy!" She gasped in shock. "You got a doggy!"

"Shinji found him about a week ago," Akihiko was saying. "I ran into them yesterday. He's really friendly! But since Shinji was feeding him all of his food this whole time, we agreed to split up his meals between the two of us, and we're going to teach him how to do all kinds of stuff!" The boy was just as excited as she was. "Like how to high-five!"

The oldest of the three was holding out his hand for the canine to sniff. Once he had, the dog's tail began the usual routine of swatting back and forth, while he swatted at the ground and barked, bounding playfully in Akihiko's direction. "His name is Hideharu."

Miki welcomed the incoming dog with open arms. "Haruharu!"

The two siblings crouched over to meet their four-legged companion, who covered them in wet kisses with his tongue; Akihiko scratched him behind the ears, while Miki went all out in wrapping her arms around his fluffy-maned neck. "Aw, he's so cute, Shinii-chan!"

"He's looking better than he was, too. I think the regular meals are helping him gain his strength back. I just can't imagine where he came from..."

"Look, boy!" Akihiko was waving a wooden stick he had picked up in front of the canine. Miki stood back to her feet and backed away so as to give Hideharu plenty of room to run, and the male tossed the stick as far as he could, watching the akita inu flash past them to fetch it. "See how fast he goes, Shinji? He's amazing!"

"Think you can beat him in a race?"

"I don't know," He pondered with the thought as Hideharu came trotting back up with the stick in mouth. "I can definitely try! Here, Shinji, you throw it."

The brunette took the stick, which Hideharu bounced around him, snapping at the air to try and retrieve, his tail sailing about all the while. Shinji instructed the dog to stand next to Akihiko, however, who was presently readying himself to run; Miki attempted to help to this end by crawling atop the dog, trying to keep him still.

When they were both aligned, Shinji asked, "Ready?"

Akihiko grinned and tossed a hand forward. "Throw it!"

The next moment, that stick was flying over the wooded canopy, straight for the plains that surrounded the orphanage. The racers both shot off at lightning speed, their feet skidding in the leaves and throwing up dirt and debris as they grappled for a footing. Miki, meanwhile, squealed when Hideharu took off. From impulse more than conscious thought, she had clutched onto the dog when he jumped, and as he ran now, she was bouncing along his spine with the flow of his strides, riding atop his back as he raced on for the stick.

Every step taken, though, saw to it that Hideharu gained ground on his two-legged competitor. No matter how hard Akihiko strained himself to run faster, he could not outrun the canine who he was only now realizing had abducted his sister. Whining a protest after the dog, he watched as the autumn-colored beast soon caught up with the stick that Shinji tossed and jumped up, his feet clawing at the air as he snapped the twig into his mouth and landed with a huff, walking in a full circle after Miki careened off of his back into the ground.

"Miki!" Akihiko launched himself forward at the prospect of injury.

Hideharu dropped the stick he had caught and whimpered, his ears and tail drooping when he soon realized the harm he might have inflicted on the young girl. But she, while being slightly breathless, still clutching the doll at her side, just started giggling. The beast's tail started to wag again, and Akihiko's laughter joined her own, while Shinji came up seconds later to assess himself that she was okay. "My turn!" The brunette lifted the stick that Hideharu had abandoned, handing it to his male companion. "You throw this time."

"Well, there's no way you're beating Hideharu!"

"I bet I can beat you!"

Akihiko handed the stick to Miki. "You're on!"

They all stood themselves back up, aligning themselves just as they had before. Both boys stood on either side of the dog, holding him relatively still as they prepped themselves for the makeshift race. When they gave their consent to Miki, she reached back and threw the stick as far as she could, and the boys just started to run... when Akihiko felt something thump the back of his head. "Ow, what the-?"

"Oh, Akinii, I'm so sorry!" Shinji and Hideharu, both of whom had taken off - though the canine soon noticed the lack of a target, and was making semi-circles again, trying to locate where it had gone - stopped to look back and see Miki, holding her hand to her face. "I didn't mean to hit you! I'm no good at throwing, remember?"

Shinji snorted, and the rest of them fell under a wave of laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

Things looked up from there. Though recent events had taken their toll on the three, they just as quickly mended the gaps, brought back together in no small part by Hideharu. The akita inu became like one of them, the trusty pet of the trio, whom they made it routine to play with every evening after school. Since they were in agreement to hide him from the orphanage, they trained him rather easily to stay away from the building and keep to the woods where he had already made himself at home in, and they each fed him a small portion of their meals every day. Though this did wear on all of them, especially when the orphanage could not provide them with as much food as usual thanks to critically tight finances, they all had no qualms doing their part for the dog who had captured their hearts so wholly. He was gentle with Miki, walked with her if she liked, and let her ride him from time to time; Shinji and Akihiko loved to race him, and swam with him in the river when it was deep enough after a period of rainfall. He couldn't climb trees, but God knows he would if it was possible, because any time the children perched themselves there, he whimpered and walked circles underneath them, making the occasional impressive jump in his best efforts to be part of the group. Since most of the other kids in the orphanage kept out of the woods, they had little trouble keeping him secret from everyone else. Word did get out amongst a few of the other kids, but at the trio's pleading, they agreed not to tell the foster parents. How did it benefit them to send this dog to the pound and, ultimately, his death?

Months passed, and while school life was no less difficult for Shinji and Akihiko - who had become personal enemies with a few other kids in their class, who had decided to hate them for no reason other than they were of a 'lower social status' - Miki found herself enjoying it slightly more upon forging her newest friendship with Koume. She kept her rabbit doll with her at all times; sleeping with it, eating with it, she told Shinji and Akihiko that it meant a lot to her, and that it was given to her by a new friend. They were happy for her. And needless to say, Miki was thrilled, too. The only issue was Koume's friend, Yuna.

Yuna and Koume had been friends since kindergarten, she had been told. The two were inseparable, and so any time Miki spent with Koume was typically spent with Yuna, too. The thing was, Yuna disliked Miki. No matter how much Miki tried to befriend her, did everything she could think of to be kind and accepting of the younger female, Yuna turned her back on everything. Why? Miki hadn't understood at first. But the more time she spent with Koume, the more she understood that it was because Yuna was jealous of the way Miki was becoming close to the girl that she had already befriended. Such a thing puzzled Miki; she didn't want to take away Koume, she was only happy that she had found someone willing to accept her and treat her at least somewhat normal despite her being an orphan. But Yuna couldn't understand that, and saw her only as a threat to her relationship with Koume.

Despite that, the two were civil towards one another. Any arguments they had - which were next to none, as Miki avoided confrontation when she could - were always had when Koume wasn't around. They played together at recess, and Miki continued to reserve her lunches for Shinji and Akihiko, who always welcomed her company.

Things went rather well this way for some time. Akihiko's injury continued to heal over, and every day he would check it in the mirror before school, putting a new patch over it. The stitches that the doctors used to seal his skin eventually just fell off - Satoru told him that they were made to do that once the wound was healed - and left in its place what was still a rather gross-looking scar that snaked its way up into his scalp. Seeing as it was already routine to patch it every day, Akihiko just continued with it for the sake of covering the scar that remained. He'd gotten used to the appearance of the bandage on the corner of his forehead, and if nothing else, he thought it looked cool. Natsuo had said so, too!

But as winter continued to roll in and the year drew to a close, there were still difficult times that the three children had yet to endure.

Christmas - and, in turn, the New Year - passed without much event. The freezing temperatures meant that all three of them spent more time indoors, but Shinji always made sure to walk out every evening and check on Hideharu. The dog had a consistent flow of food, but sometimes the temperatures plunged low enough to where he needed extra warmth, and those were the times that Shinji would sacrifice his bed blanket to tuck in Hideharu in the clearing and make sure he didn't freeze or catch a cold. The only issue was that there were times Hideharu tried to follow Shinji back, and they were required to start leashing him to one of the trees in the clearing between their visits.

Since the brunette's own bed lacked a blanket, then, he would bunk with Akihiko and Miki, who didn't mind - especially since his addition to the bed meant that there was more warmth, given that he shared his body heat with them - and come Christmas, Shinji and Akihiko had worked together to ensure Miki had something to wake up to. As usual, they requested that Satoru purchase something for her in exchange for whatever labor he needed done around the building. That year, their efforts saw to it that she got a silver necklace. It was a thin chain, and a cheap form of silver, but Miki couldn't have been happier. She flaunted her first piece of jewelry at every opportunity she had, treasuring it, and never let Akihiko or Shinji forget that they were her favorite, bestest big brothers in the whole world.

The New Year festivities were much more significant than those of Christmas, and the orphanage celebrated them the same as it did every year. However, in contrast to previous years, there were little to no treats, and the decorations were few and far between. Satoru told them it was because money was a little tighter now, but that they would make up for it by putting something extra special in for next New Year's. No one had much of a problem with that - they could be patient. For them, the few treats they got for New Year's was already being spoiled. 'Spoiled' and 'orphan' hardly belonged in the same sentence.

So January came and went, and February rolled in, tantalizingly close to ending the trio's third year of school. And given the circumstances, there was no telling how eager all three of them were for the school year to finally be over.

There came a time, which started when Shinji started asking for spare food when he was feeding Hideharu on his own, that the children in the boys' class decided that they were beneath them. Growing up, both of them had come to realize that the discrimination against the orphans in their school was bad because Kawatani had been there for generations before it, and the other children were often advised to stay away from the children that attended from there. That didn't make it any easier to deal with. When Shinji started to show desperation for extra food in that time, the other children jumped at the opportunity to use it as proof of their 'lower' character. They were beggars! Rather than buy their own food, they wanted to eat everyone else's, and didn't mind asking for more! The trash talk, while something that grated horribly on Akihiko's nerves, went mostly ignored. They had likewise been taught not to indulge the children who tried to pick fights with them. Shinji just didn't care - he was more interested in getting the food than whatever his classmates thought of him, trying to sustain himself when he had little to go by - and any time someone tried to bring up confrontation, a few cuss words and a threat to break their fingers usually sufficed to chase them off. That was perhaps a benefit to looking as mean as Shinji did. There had always been a sort of thuggish appearance to him, and that, coupled with his rather quiet nature and his foul language when provoked, made him frightening to most of the other children.

But Akihiko had a harder time brushing those things off. Teasing got to him more easily than it did to Shinji. Whereas Shinji could just scare them off, Akihiko had to be civil, treat them with politeness and dignity, and ignore their jabs. It didn't always work. Of course, no one tried to be physical with him; despite never having been in any actual fights, it was known that Akihiko and Shinji were not pushovers in the matter. But verbal abuse was good enough for them. They were perfectly content to parrot what their parents, no-doubt, had called them; 'savages', or 'dirty children'. Worst of all were their claims that they would grow up to become theives and criminals that were the bane of society. Put frankly - and rather lightly - all of it was irritating, and it made Akihiko wish he could break all their noses if only it didn't teach them that they were right.

He was tired of struggling with this identity. This label of 'orphan'. There were children who acted out much more than him and Shinji combined, and yet they were the ones who were shunned and blamed first in any situation of crisis.

Miki, meanwhile, had similar problems. Things had gotten better since the introduction of Koume into her life, but that wasn't to say the improvement lasted.

Since that first day, when Koume had given Miki that rabbit doll that meant so much to her, the girl had held onto it religiously. She dusted it off any time it got dirty, she cuddled it next to her when she slept, and it dried her tears when she cried. It became her most treasured artifact, given to her by someone who had it within themselves to share something so important with her. It was a symbol of trust, of friendship, that had been fostered between the two children regardless of the odds stacked against it.

But Miki had never thought that showing just how important the doll was only made it susceptible to harm. The school children had never been known for their generosity toward Miki, and the thought of pushing her down, whether literally or metaphorically speaking, had always delighted them. Naomi was a prime suspect in this case.

One day, Koume's mother came to visit her during lunch. This didn't much affect Miki, who still ate with her brothers anyway - but when it came time for recess, Koume had to stay behind a little later to finish chatting and eating with her Mom. So Miki approached Yuna, attempting once again to show her nothing short of friendliness in order to try breaking down that invisible barrier of jealousy that held the two apart. Yuna was still a bit cold, but despite that, the two walked around the playground together and shared something like light-hearted banter. They didn't have much else to do; swings already been taken today.

That was soon interrupted. To Miki and Yuna's surprise, Naomi approached them for the first time during recess. She apologized for every instance that she had teased Miki, put her down, stolen her homework or tripped her in class. And though she was hesitant to do so, Miki told her that she forgave her. To represent their new 'friend' status, Naomi wanted to see Miki's bunny; though she hesitated, and at first resisted, Naomi played on Miki's altruistic nature by pretending to cry. Afraid of pushing Naomi away if she really was trying to be nicer, Miki said that she would let Naomi hold the bunny until she cheered up.

But she should have known, the minute she handed the bunny to Naomi, the girl giggled and took off running toward the playground fence.

Miki was faster. She took after Naomi in a screaming fit of terror, begging her not to hurt the doll, that it wasn't hers, that it belonged to Koume and meant a lot to them both. But Naomi had gotten a head start. When she reached the fence, she tried to throw it over; it caught on the metal wires that composed the diamond-pattern mesh, and while crying angrily over her failed sabotage of the doll, she improvised just in time to stop Miki from getting it back. With it caught on the wire, Naomi pulled down on it as hard as she could, and ripped the fabric enough to completely tear the poor creature's head from its body.

Seeing the poor doll with its head spiked on the fence like a trophy of war, its body bleeding stuffing all over the cement playground floor, Miki could not help but cry. She bawled over the the broken toy, numbed to Naomi's teasing and the awkward presence of Yuna nearby. The commotion not only attracted other children, but Koume soon after. The sight of her doll in ruins was enough to make her start crying, too.

That only made the platinum girl angry. Why would Naomi do something so horrible, just to make her feel bad? Didn't she care about anyone's feelings except her own? While trying to explain to Koume what had happened, she finally turned on Naomi and shouted at her, too, only to see that she, too, had started to cry. But why was she crying? She was the one who tore up the doll! She was the one who took some kind of... sick _joy_ from all of this!

But she was crying. More than that, she looked at Koume and told her, "Miki did it!"

Miki had never been so murderously angry in her life.

Koume, bless her, was better than that. She wasn't going to be fooled by whatever plight that Naomi had come up with. The girl only pretended to cry harder, insisting that Miki had done it to get back at Koume for liking Yuna more. Bringing Yuna into the picture was what brought about suspicion. Koume knew that the two girls had issues with one another due to her mutual friendship with the two of them; there were many times that Yuna had complained that Koume had never let her have the rabbit doll for as long as they were friends, and often accused Koume of liking Miki more. Miki, then, while harboring no resentment herself, was guilty by association. And when Koume turned to Yuna and asked her who had actually torn the rabbit doll, to clarify whether or not Naomi was a lying brat, Yuna took one look at Miki and said, "Miki did it. Miki tore the doll."

So that day, when they were released again from school, Miki ran to her brother, crying so hard that she could hardly sustain the will to breathe.

Akihiko practically jumped out of his skin at the sight of her. After she crashed into him, sobbing, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close in embrace, resting his head on her shoulder, permitting her as much time as she needed to run all the sobs dry from her body - all the while, he cleared the tears from her face when they fell, and did what he could to cheer her up. "Hey, Shimada-sensei gave me some chocolate today," He turned to retrieve a small packet from one of the pouches in his backpack, holding it out to her in the palm of his hand. "You can have it. I already ate the other one."

She swallowed, and made her best effort to talk. "I... I can have it?"

"Of course!" He beamed, "Anything for my little sister!"

This, as it usually did, was enough to make her smile. She kissed his cheek and took the packet, splitting it open with her fingers and popping the morsel of chocolate in her mouth; she pulled back from him a little, so that she was sitting evenly between him and Shinji, all of whom were perched on the same bench just outside of the school.

"What happened?" It was the brunette who finally asked. "Are you okay?"

She opened her mouth, but the words were caught in her throat. _I want to be strong._ The thought strengthened her conviction._ I want to be like you guys..._

"Your doll!" Akihiko blurted out, pointing to that empty space where her doll would often be tucked up against her. "Where'd your doll go?"

Miki sniffled, her voice whimpering until she summoned the words. "I... I lost it." That wasn't a complete lie. "A-And... and Koume-chan hates me now."

Both of the boys fell into silence. Akihiko shook his head and patted her on the shoulder, "Everyone makes mistakes, Miki. I bet we can find it if we look. Right, Shinji?"

"W-Well," The girl clenched, "I-I think I remember Amigawa-sensei telling me that they found a doll on the playground, and it was thrown away..." She sniffled again and wiped her eyes with her arm. "It's probably long gone by now..."

Akihiko tried to insist, for her sake, "We can still look."

"Forget it, Aki. What kid wants a doll that's been in the trash?" The brunette shook his head and stood back up, offering his hand to her. "Don't feel bad. Aki's right; everyone makes mistakes. If Koume doesn't get that, it's her loss." Bringing her palm to his, he held fast to her dainty hand and helped pick her back up to her feet. "I'll take care of the doll, okay?"

She blinked up at him with glassy eyes, a hue of silver almost identical to her hair - a hue more pure than her brother's, which were undertoned with brown. "You... you will?"

He smiled and ruffled her hair. "You bet."

۞

Back at the orphanage, the trio had arrived in the company of the usual crowd returning from school. For once, Natsuo was not among them. Satoru commented - whether to them or to himself - that he was probably with a girl he had recently been talking about.

All three of them had stopped by the sleeping room just after arriving home. Miki kicked her shoes off next to her bed and set her backpack off to the side, where Shinji and Akihiko soon placed their's as well. "It's a little warmer out today," Shinji was yawning, plopping himself on the edge of whatever bed happened to be behind him. "I'm going to go back outside. There's a few hours left before dinner."

Akihiko was fiddling with his shoe laces. "You're not going to help Riyeko today?"

"I've been helping her a lot, since it's been too cold to leave the building." He shrugged and rose back to a stand. "She'll be fine. You guys coming?"

Miki flopped onto the bed on her side, ruffling her own hair and slipping the two hairbands that maintained her typical pigtails out from within her many locks. "...I'm going to stay inside today," She decided. "You'll be back before dinner, right?"

"Yeah." Her brother bounced up from the mattress, tossing the end of his blankets over on top of her. She caught them in her hands and tugged them over herself, rolling over and puffing her pillow a few times before she let her head rest on it. "We'll wake you up."

She snuggled into the fabric, her face softening. "Thanks, Akinii."

The two males departed without another word, their steps quiet on the wooden floors. They both waved when they passed Satoru, who was just about to return to the room to read one of his books and take a breather; they told him that they were going to be out for a while, but they would be back in time for dinner, and he merely nodded after them and reminded them to be safe. That was the extent of it, though. No 'don't go too far', or 'try to avoid traffic' - Akihiko figured he must have felt like he was wasting his breath.

"So, Shinji," He struck up conversation just as they were landing off the front doorstep. "Where are we going? To check on Hideharu?"

The brunette looked absent-minded. He nodded, though. "Yeah. Then I need to go somewhere. You can stay here, though."

"Nah, I'll go with you. I don't have any homework tonight."

"I know that, dork. We have the same class."

"Well-!" Akihiko sighed. "...I-I knew that."

It was only minutes before they arrived to that place in the forest. They had grown so used to traveling the path that they hardly required a luxury like sight when navigating it; tonight, that was of no concern given it was still rather early in the evening, but Shinji mentioned that their footsteps were starting to form a path in the undergrowth. "Maybe we should start taking another path. We don't want anyone to find him by accident."

"I don't think anyone'll hurt him, Shinji. Especially since you've got him tied up now."

"I know, I just..." The brunette sighed, moving underneath another low-hanging tree-branch. "I don't want to risk it or anything, you know?"

"You just don't want to share if he becomes the orphanage pet."

Shinji scoffed, denying Akihiko's claims. This only warranted further playful teasing, which was eventually silenced with a punch to the chest, just around the time they were walking into the clearing where Hideharu stayed. He must have been able to catch their scent on the wind, because he was already up and wagging his tail when they arrived.

The older of the two greeted the dog warmly, crouching down and accepting the barrage of licks that Hideharu never failed to shower down on him. Patting him a few times, scratching him behind the ears, Shinji took to the rope he had tied around that dusty collar that was buried back in the orphanage's storage room and unfastened it. Akihiko, who had been standing a foot or so behind Shinji, was no longer safe then and huffed in surprise when the canine bounded past the brunette and tackled his younger companion to the ground.

Shinji took on a dramatic stance. "A wise man never lets down his guard."

"Oh, shut up!" Akihiko laughed and pulled a stick from the foliage underneath him, tossing it at his friend. Shinji caught the flimsy object before it had a chance to strike him, though, and jabbed the younger of them with the opposite end.

They spent some time playing in the woods, then. The time flew past as they practiced running, this time trying to decide who could jump the farthest over the river. Hideharu, as usual, beat them by a longshot. Then they climbed up onto a low-hanging branch to catch their breaths and make themselves feel better; tree-climbing was the only thing that Hideharu couldn't do better than them.

Akihiko wiped his forehead, making sure his bandage was still in place, and started to pick leaves out from under his shirt. How they always managed to get in his clothes was beyond him. "So where are we going from here?"

Shinji paused wistfully. "Paulownia mall, I think."

"You never wanna go there." He took off his shoe and shook some water out of it.

"What's your point? I want to go today."

Akihiko popped his shoe back on. Then he shrugged. "Okay. What for?"

"Just check stuff out." That was a flimsy reason, and Akihiko knew it. There was some reason he wanted to go - he just didn't want to say. Ah, well. He didn't care much either way. His only concern is that they would kick them out again. They didn't usually go, so it wasn't like the people in the area recognized them... if they fixed their clothes a little before they went, he was sure they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Except, uh, the fact that they were two little kids wandering around on their own. Akihiko kept forgetting that was a pretty good indication that they didn't have any parents.

After agreeing to go, Shinji tied Hideharu back into the clearing - while commenting that since it wasn't winter anymore, they might be able to let him roam freely again - and the two of them stopped inside of the orphanage and cleaned any dirt or moisture that had gotten on them from playing near the river. That only took a few minutes, and they were back off on the way to the train station in the nearby Iwatodai. One boring train ride later, something that had long lost its awe-inspiring appeal after the first twenty rides to and from school, they got back off at Port Island and leisurely walked their way to the mall.

First, they stopped near the water fountain. That was one of Akihiko's favorite parts of the mall square, was the fountain. Natsuo told him that it was bad to drink after he tried one time, which he readily agreed on after realizing that fountain water tasted disgusting, but he still enjoyed watching it run endlessly over the sculpted ripples of the marble structure. They poked their head into several places, such as the cafe and the night club, most of which they had never seen before, before Shinji gestured to a toy shop across the square. "Hey, why don't we check that place out? I've never been in a toy store before."

Akihiko looked at him frankly. "That's because we don't have any money."

The brunette agreed with his point, but headed off toward it anyway. "We can still look. Come on." Akihiko figured, 'why not?' and walked after him.

Before they went in, Shinji tucked in the ends of his uniform shirt into his pants. That was odd, because more often than not, he had to be pestered by the school staff to do it - it was part of dress code, they had been told - but Akihiko really didn't think to question it, and they walked in as nonchalantly as two unattended children in a mall could.

"Hi, welcome to-?" The woman at the front desk turned to greet them, only to realize the faces of her new patrons were about a foot lower than she was used to. "Oh, hello! How are you two tonight? ...Where are your parents?"

Shinji gestured an elbow to the door, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "They're just outside," He told her, beckoning Akihiko after him.

"Oh, all right. Feel free to look around!"

A few long strides from the door, and they were swallowed up by the rows and rows of aisles, filled with nothing but toys from top to bottom. Akihiko hardly imagined a store like this was real. He had heard of the toy store, of course, but having never been in one himself, he was completely amazed by how much merchandise was here. "Hey, Shinji, look!"

The brunette, who had been walking ahead of him, glanced back to watch as Akihiko pulled a large plastic device from off one of the shelves; puzzled, he turned and took a step back, only to realize the overly large 'machine' was, in fact, a giant gun.

The silver boy smiled and whipped it toward his friend. "Freeze!"

Shinji's lips curved into a smirk. "You think you can catch me?"

"Hey!" When the tan boy raced off, Akihiko gave chase, nearly tripping over himself when trying to carry the sizeable water gun with him. "I said freeze!" His feet skid on the slick surface when he turned a sharp corner, his eyes fleeting about everywhere, and yet catching no sight of Shinji. Where'd he go? This store was surprisingly maze-like...

Akihiko looked back down at the gun in his hands, feeling another smile pull at his cheeks. Well, fine! If Shinji wanted to be that way, he'd just have to sneak around until he found him. Skittering into one of the many aisles, he held up the gun vertically against himself, leaving one hand on the trigger while using the other to hold it in place. "I've got the target cornered. He's _some_where in this facility. I didn't see any weapons on him, but he might be armed. You can never be _too_ careful..." He snuck around another corner and looked both ways. "He's crafty, I'll give him that. He's already slipped through my fingers once, but-"

The platinum boy squeaked when he felt something punch his back. "Boo!"

"Wha- hey!" The boy tried to regain his breath, flushing pink with embarrassment. Grappling for some kind of argument was useless, so he went with, "You... you scared me!"

"It's getting late. We should be going back," The brunette took the gun from his younger, slightly shorter companion, and set it back on the closest shelf. "Besides, we wouldn't want you hurting yourself, officer Aki."

"Pff! We just got here! If you'd given me five more minutes, I'd-!"

Shinji didn't stick around for his half-assed defense, instead grabbing his wrist and dragging him off back toward the front of the store. They didn't leave right off the bat, though; the boy had them wait until a man from outside walked into the store, calling out, "Hey, Tsutomu, Aito! It's time to go, your mother is waiting!"

Then Shinji ushered Akihiko forward, and the two of them departed the store.

The behavior struck Akihiko as odd. "Why didn't we just walk out?"

He could only see his friend's back; Shinji wouldn't face him. "What do you mean? We did." After skirting around the edge of the mall, the brunette started to lead them out of the mall square, but the pace he was going at made it difficult to assume that he wasn't trying to get out of there. For what reason did he suddenly want to leave so bad?

Akihiko stopped, narrowing his eyes. "Shinji, what're you doing?"

"What's your deal? I just noticed it was late. We need to go."

"Since when do you care how long it takes us to get back home?"

The brunette was starting to get short with him. "Let's just _go_, Aki. We said we'd be back in time for dinner, remember? Do you want to worry Miki?"

He faltered a little at mention of his sister. Shinji was right, after all. She would start to worry if they weren't back when they promised they would be. But something was up with Shinji, and if he didn't tell him, he wasn't going to move from this spot!

"Shinji, something is going on. Tell me the truth."

The look his friend gave him was begrudging, but after pulling him into the closest alleyway, he untucked his shirt and pulled something out from under it - a rabbit doll, no doubt from the toy store. The sight of it made Akihiko panic and yet angered him both at once; did he _steal_ that toy from the store? Is that the whole reason they went inside? ...This had been his plan from the beginning! He actually _planned_ to steal it!

"Look, I just wanted to get this. If we get home, no one will notice-"

Akihiko cut him off, clenching a fist and pointing the other at the offending object. He couldn't believe it! He just... couldn't believe it! "What the hell is that?"

"...Are you mad? Just, after what Miki told us, I-"

"Of course I'm mad! What the hell is wrong with you? You stole that!"

"Chill out, Aki! Why are you so pissed off?"

"Are you _stupid_?" He was shaking. He was so utterly shocked by what had just happened, right under his nose, that he could not stop the quaking of his body. Why did it... sting? His eyes were stinging. He had just never felt so angry before, so disappointed, so... betrayed. "You're stealing! Thieves steal, Shinji! Criminals!"

The brunette, in contrast, was frightened. The look on his friend's face was so alien to him that his own warped into a guilt like that of a scolded puppy. "I-It's just a doll...!"

No. He had never been so angry. He had never felt so angry! Why didn't Shinji understand? The frustration that welled in him, unexpressed, made Akihiko's fists clench to the point of hurting. He didn't know what to do. What _could_ he do?

He didn't know the answer to that. But whatever he should have done, he found himself reaching back with one of those fists, and punching it right across Shinji's cheek.

The brunette was so shocked that he actually staggered behind the force of the impact. He tripped over his own two feet, careening backwards and landing in a sit; Akihiko followed him down, grabbing the collar of his shirt, and punched him again. "How could you do this?" He screamed between punches, oblivious to the hot moisture that ran off of his cheeks, tears that dripped from his face onto the brunette under him. "How could you...? You're better than that, Shinji!" Every shout was enunciated by another punch. Each one weakened in strength, each one fell less and less heavy on his friend, who he could not face for all the emotion the sight of him brought. "You're not a criminal! You're... you're not going to grow up and be like the scum they think we are!"

Every jab those children made... every taunt, every word that claimed they would grow up to live in the same poverty they were born into... every time Akihiko wondered if they were right, and every time he resolved to prove them wrong, to grow up and be successful, to _be_ someone, just so he could look back and say, 'look at what I've become...'

He let go of the boy's collar. He stood up, let out another wail of anguish, and collapsed onto his knees no more than a foot away, covering his face to hide the tears that streamed so freely past them. How could he? How _could_ he...?

Shinji was grimacing, bracing himself for another hit, but it never came. Akihiko had stopped. He sat up, stared for a single blank and horrified moment, and then walked on his knees to his sobbing friend and wrapped his arms around him. He felt something warm drip onto his hand. When he looked down, he saw... blood.

"A-Aki, I'm sorry-" Why was he apologizing? He didn't know. He was so confused. Everything had just happened so fast, he... "I didn't know... I didn't think about it..." His throat started to tighten. "J-Just stop crying, okay? I'll take it back! I... I don't wanna be a thief..."

Akihiko clutched back onto the brunette, burying his face against the boy's shoulder and wailing again. He saw the doll, dropped, its face half covered in dirt as it had been abandoned there upon his attacking Shinji. It was only amidst his own sobbing that he acknowledged he had brought Shinji to start crying, too. Why was Shinji crying? Why was... _he_ crying? Still shaking, he let his arms fall back down to his sides, and when the older boy let him go just after, he sniffled and staggered back up to his feet.

Shinji stayed on his knees. His eyes were downcast, blank, and he held his hands out so that he could see them, almost mystified by the blood that dripped into his palm.

"Y-You're bleeding," Akihiko stammered. "...Are you okay?"

There was a throbbing silence that followed. Shinji shook again, then started to laugh. "You beat the crap out of me, and then ask me if I'm okay?" He pushed himself back up. It was hard, though. For some reason, his body suddenly felt like it was made of lead. "You're... you're such a dork, Aki. Why the hell..."

"I'm sorry." He fumbled out. "Just, everything those kids said..."

"I'm the one who should be sorry."

Akihiko couldn't much argue with that.

"I'm the one who stole this. I feel like an idiot. You're right... if I had taken this back to the orphanage, I'd... I'd be no better than what those kids said we'd be, huh..." Still, his companion was lost for words. He laughed again, self-depreciatingly, and picked up the doll, dusting the dirt off of it to return it to pristine condition. "I, uh... I should take this back."

"...I'll go with you," The younger finally managed to say.

Shinji's voice quivered as much as his smile. "...Thanks."

۞

Thirty minutes later, they were back on the train.

After he stopped his lip from bleeding, Shinji and Akihiko both mustered the courage to head back through the mall square and walk into the store. Both of them were shaking, and oddly cold; two steps inside and the woman at the desk could tell something was wrong by their vast change in demeanor. She took one glance at the toy that was in Shinji's hand and realized then that he had stolen it. Rather than thank them for bringing it back, they both fell under a harsh blow to the cheek each, and fled from the store with the woman's hand printed on the left side of their faces. They didn't stop until they reached the station. They got on, found the most secluded corner of the train they could, and huddled there in silence.

It rolled to life a few minutes later. Sitting there, it felt like an eternity. Akihiko had never taken such an explicit interest in the floor, in the patterns drawn there... he had never kept his eyes on the ground for so long. But his head felt heavy, like he couldn't look up even if he wanted to. Had all of that really happened? It felt like... a blur, now.

He brought a hand up to his cheek. It would have been easy to believe it hadn't happened if his cheek wasn't still stinging. "...She didn't have to hit _me._"

To his surprise, that made Shinji laugh. He looked up, trying to meet his friend's eyes. "You hit me enough for the two of us, without her adding to it."

Akihiko tried to laugh, too. ...It was hard. "You deserved it."

Silence befell them again. But Shinji shook his head, nursing his swollen lip in his mouth. In the end, all he could say was, "...I know."

Only ten minutes before they got back to Iwatodai. It was probably past dinner.

"Hey, um... I know this probably sounds weird, but... thanks."

Akihiko managed to sit himself up straight, his eyes curious.

"For keeping an eye on me, you know? Sticking me back in line." He forced another one of those humorless laughs. "That's my job, you know. Can't have you doing it for me."

The younger of them felt those tears press at his eyes again. "You're welcome."

"Just don't hit so hard next time, okay?"

"If you do it again, I'll hit you even harder."

"...Well, I guess I'd deserve that, too." He held a finger up to his lip and winced. The bleeding had died down, but it was still sore. "I won't like it, though."

Words failed between them after that. Neither of them could think of what to say to the other. They hopped off the train without any words, and walked all the way back to the orphanage, too. It was only when they walked through the front door that either one of them opened their mouth again, and it was Shinji, greeting Satoru as he left the eating room.

Concern came to his voice. "You two look exhausted. Something happen?"

"Nothing I feel like talkin' about," the brunette exhaled. He turned, beelining for the wash room where he could find something to help soothe his injury. "Sorry we're back a little late. We got back as soon as we could. Did you wake up Miki for dinner?"

"Yeah. She was worried about you guys."

"I'll go tell her we're here," Akihiko dragged himself into the next room. All things considered, he didn't have much of an appetite. He would be going to bed early that night. Just before he passed into the next room, he stopped, caught in mental limbo between whether to speak or not. He decided to. "Um... th-thanks, Sato-san."

"Hm?" The adult turned around from his direction to the sleeping room. "For what?"

"For... looking after Miki. A-And us," He wasn't sure what he was saying. Tonight had been weird. Maybe he needed that sleep more than he realized. "Thanks... for everything."

Maybe the first time in months, a wide and genuine smile came to the man's face.

"You're welcome, Aki. You're a pain in the ass sometimes," He paused and held his arms out, something that Akihiko hesitated at, but soon after walked over to accept, "but what kid isn't? ...I know I'm not your real Dad or nothin', but... you're my kid, whether you like it or not. I raised all of you, and you're all important to me. Don't you forget that."

Akihiko buried his face in Satoru's shirt, squeezing his eyes shut and resisting the urge to cry again. "...I won't. I'll never forget you, Sato-san."


	8. Chapter 8

That night was one that neither of the boys spoke of again. They didn't even tell Miki about it; both of them were afraid that mentioning any fighting going on between them would upset her. They had argued before, after all. At first she would tell them to stop, then she would try getting in between them, and if that didn't work, she would cry. That always worked. Neither of them ever got angry enough at the other to carry such petty grudges against one another, especially when it hurt her. So as smoothly as if 'that night at the toy store' never happened, their lives went on. Never mentioned, but never forgotten, either.

Finally, as more weeks passed and each of them dealt with the turmoils of daily school life, March came. Spring arrived, and awakened the frozen world as it did. It brought a new life and hope to all of them, not just in the form of fresh blooms and warm weather, but in the relief that came with ending the school year. Now that Koume and Yuna had turned their backs on her, Miki found herself as lonely and lacking anyone to talk to as before. But that was okay. She had her older brother. Or, brothers. Shinji was as special to her as if she had known him her whole life, and honestly, it felt like she had.

But they weren't quite free yet. There was one final conclusion to those last six months, one last hardship that they had to trudge through, in that single harsh year that was likely the hardest they had ever experienced during their short lives.

That was when the early springtime downpours began, bringing floods in their wake.

The torrential rain that day had started while they were all in school. When the bell rang to dismiss them, Natsuo was at the front doorstep with Hania and a few others in the faction. "We need to go _straight_ home, okay?" He was shouting to be heard over the drum of the rain and thunder. Miki was glued to her brother's side; Shinji was on the end opposite of her, which proved to be their default formation when in a crisis. "Stay close to us!"

They didn't have to be told more than once. All three of them huddled near one another, running with the rest of the faction toward the train station. They boarded, drenched and shivering from the rain, and found a group of unoccupied seats near one another. Miki cuddled against her brother for warmth, and Akihiko gave his jacket - soaking, but hopefully good for giving some kind of relief from the cold - to Shinji.

Natsuo was trying to assess everyone as the train started up. "Is everyone here?"

"Hinatea and Fumito both went home before the rest of us," Hania told him. "I'm sure they'll be fine. Everyone else is here, just a bit... wet."

"It's raining like crazy! I didn't think it'd be this bad."

Everyone else hugged into themselves. Shinji sneezed. In response to this, Natsuo stood up and walked across the aisle, seating himself next to the brunette and hugging the boy to himself similar to how Akihiko and Miki were lending heat to one another.

The ride there was quiet, and a mood of anxiety seemed to hang over all of them. The windows were black with the darkened world outside, and the train echoed with the rattle of raindrops on the metal ceiling. The trip passed by quickly; once they pulled into the station on Iwatodai, they all filed out of the monorail and started on their run back to the orphanage for shelter. When they reached the plains, Shinji kept trying to steer off in another direction, but Natsuo refused to let him. "Where do you think you're going?" Natsuo kept shouting after him, giving chase and grabbing his arm. "We have to get back inside, now!"

"But-!" The brunette choked on his words. Akihiko was occupied with trying to get Miki and himself inside - he was oblivious to the concerns of his friend.

The door slammed shut once they were all inside. Natsuo ran off to fetch a towel, while Satoru immediately came and checked up on all of them. Shinji kept sneezing, but he was equally determined to go back outside, much to the confusion of everyone else.

"Shinji, you are to _stay indoors_, do you hear me?"

"I have to go back out there! I forgot something!"

He managed to get the door open, but the black-haired adult caught him before he could flee. "_Shinji_! We don't need you getting sick! Stay inside!"

Natsuo had returned by then. Satoru ordered him to keep an eye on the brunette, which he did, trying to keep him busy by drying him off with towels and get him out of all of his soaking clothes. Miki, too, started sneezing, but Akihiko sat her and himself down and Satoru handed him one of the towels to start trying to dry her off.

The man stopped in his rush to check up on everyone to ask the siblings, specifically, "Are you two okay?" It was probably one of the first acts of open concern he had bothered to show since the falling out several months ago. Akihiko, shaking, nodded and said that they were fine - just a little cold. They had been pretty safe on their way home.

Not more than ten minutes after they got back, everyone in the faction was rallied up and sent to their sleeping room. Satoru closed the blinds in there and kept the lights off, instead using a few small lanterns to illuminate the area. "Everyone stay calm, okay? This storm is supposed to be pretty bad, but it should pass by late tonight. We're going to be safe and stay inside, in here, until it does, so no one leave."

Most of the older members of the faction retired to sleep. Some others sat on each others' beds, conversing, and Natsuo sat on his own, next to Satoru's, looking tired but alert. Being their parent's esteemed "helper" meant that he had to stay on his toes.

Shinji, however, was pacing around the room, casting glances toward the doorway.

Miki swept dull pieces of silver hair from her face, which was still damp with moisture from their race through the outdoors. "Shinii-chan, what's wrong?"

The boy cast a glance toward both siblings, but only glared and shook his head.

Akihiko was extremely puzzled by his friend's behavior. Had they done something to upset him? Shinji might have been irritable sometimes, but he almost never got _angry_ with them. Slipping out from under the blankets of his bed, he ran over to the brunette, and it was in mid-stride that the realization suddenly crashed down on him; _Hideharu!_

That was it! That must have been what Shinji was worried about! The Kawatani plains were extremely prone to flooding during heavy rainfall, and Hideharu would have no idea to keep away from it in the case that there was a flash flood...

Akihiko, too, felt his heart plunge. What could they possibly do for him? Trying to escape outside in this weather was not only dangerous, but would probably incur the anger of Satoru, not to mention everyone else; in addition, as soon as Satoru realized that they were risking their lives to save a dog, Hideharu would no longer be secret, and would likely be sent to the pound faster than any of the trio could squeak a word of protest.

The brunette's hand clenching on the fabric of his sleeve was what brought him from his thoughts. "I have to check on Hideharu! He needs to stay on higher ground!"

"But we can't leave!" Akihiko argued back, just as urgent, despite the hushed volume of his voice. "You think Satoru is going to let us out? It's dangerous outside!"

They both stood still, rigid, their eyes searching one another for the answers that neither of them could provide. Akihiko was the one to break that eye contact, clenching his fists, "I know you're worried about him, but there's nothing we can do!" When Shinji seemed to slouch, his eyes blank, the boy went on, "Besides, he might be okay! He's a smart dog!"

He wasn't sure if Shinji heard him. He had never seen the brunette look so lost.

۞

Like Satoru predicted, the storm took place for several long, drawing hours. Shinji eventually stopped pacing to sit on the edge of his bed, but he never once succumbed to sleep, unlike the many others in the faction who took advantage of the opportunity to rest. Miki fell asleep, more or less against her will. Even Akihiko found himself becoming drowsy. But he didn't lie down or shut his eyes, because he was afraid that if he did, Shinji would escape. More still, he, too, was afraid for Hideharu, trapped outdoors, and what might have become of him in the aftermath of this long and ruthless storm.

The instant Satoru told them that the storm was starting to clear, Shinji took off. This was of course met with the adult's shouting after him, but he never paused in stride; Akihiko took off after him, and Miki, stirred to awareness, meandered after them with Natsuo in tow.

The whole time the two boys ran, their feet smacking in the saturated, muddy grasses of the Kawatani plain, Akihiko kept praying. _Please let him be okay. Please, let Hideharu be okay. _When he caught up with Shinji, who was winding around every tree and every bush in search of a single trace of the autumnal coat of fur, Akihiko did whatever he could to sound calm and certain of the fact that Hideharu would be perfectly fine.

He wanted to be right. He wanted to be right so, so much.

But if Shinji's outcry, if the way he fell to his knees, shaking, slowly bending over in the boggy ground that was so littered with leaves and moss, was any indication...

He hadn't been right.

"Hideharu!" Akihiko darted over to the brunette's side, around the bend, and clenched when his blood turned to ice at the sight of the dog. "H-Hideharu?"

He was sprawled out across the ground, covered in leaves and debris picked up from the river. This, and the fact that the water-line loomed just a foot away, made it easy to piece together what had brought the dog to this fate. His jaws were open, his tongue lolling, his eyes wide and blank and staring at nothing. ...Akihiko had never seen anything so chilling, so upsetting. The tears that came to his eyes fell in silence, and yet the pain that speared his heart at the sight of both the dog and Shinji, bending over him, was the most immense he had ever felt. How could this happen? Why couldn't he have escaped to higher ground...?

It dawned on Akihiko just as Shinji reached up and clicked off his collar.

"I forgot to untie the leash..."

_No._ The boy kneeled at his friend's side. _No..._

"He was tied down..." The pitch of Shinji's voice had become so high that it was heart-wrenching to listen to, "I knew there was no way he could have..."

"Shinji, this isn't-"

"God damn it!" His screams echoed in the forest, thrown back to him in the form of a rumbling thunder that roared from a distance, and the drizzle that remained from the earlier downpour hid the tears that cascaded past his cheeks. "This is _my_ fault! If I had just...! If I had just remembered to untie him... if I had just come out here when I had the chance, he...!"

Miki and Natsuo came running up, eyes wide and panicked. Akihiko was hardly conscious of their arrival, numbed by the sight in front of him, deaf to everything, from the heavens' bellowing to the obscenities that Shinji spat out in his despair.

Natsuo was completely taken aback. "What is-?"

But he, too, stopped when he saw the body. Miki walked forward, reclining next to her brother, her eyes becoming glassy at the sight of the poor dog, soaking wet and plastered with mud. Never had his underfed body looked so gaunt, or his eyes looked so empty. "Haruharu," she whispered his name, reaching a hand forward and resting it on his shoulder. But he didn't stir in the slightest; not a single flick of the ear, or a twitch of the tail. All the life contained in such a majestic beast was gone, just like that. "Get up, Haruharu..."

It was like he was sleeping. Forever. He was gone, and he would never wake up. Akihiko felt something inside of him stir, something repulsed, something angry and unable to understand - why did these things happen? Why did things... die? He could not grasp the concept. Death was horrible. He hated it, and all the same, it terrified him. He had skirted around it many times, but had never realized the gravity of it. If he had died, is this what would have become of him? Would he only be a shadow of what he was when alive, like this limp body, sprawled in disarray with such cold, staring eyes?

It was hard to understand... Hideharu was never coming back. He was really gone, forever. They would never see him wagging his tail, all excited to see them; they would never race him through the fields, or see who could jump the farthest over the stream...

With all three children sitting, watching, teary-eyed, almost like willing the poor dog to stand up just one last time to give them a proper chance at saying goodbye, Natsuo was the one who finally walked forward. He might have been oblivious to this dog's existence, nor could he feel the extent of their shock and pain, but he could understand it. He knew that feeling, that shock confusion that made it so difficult to comprehend the finality of death. He felt for them, because he knew what it felt like to lose someone.

He stepped forward in that quiet. His feet squelched in the mud, and when he lowered himself down to pick up the dog's body - cold and growing rigid in his arms - the children did nothing to stop him. Shinji wouldn't even lift himself from the ground.

"Come on." The teen ushered them. "Let's give him a proper burial."

۞

Akihiko felt like he had forgotten how to talk. He wasn't sure why, except that he couldn't think of words appropriate enough to be spoken. Natsuo took them deeper into the woods than they had ever been, and toiled to dig a hole in the boggy ground, using little more than a makeshift branch; Shinji and the Sanadas stood off to the side, stiff and speechless alongside one another. That in itself took the better part of an hour. But when Natsuo finally did it, his hands and feet and cheeks all painted in mud, he picked Hideharu back up, set him down next to the hole, and told them all to say goodbye.

Miki went first. She walked forward, sat next to his body, and just... talked to him. Why? Akihiko couldn't understand why. Hideharu couldn't hear her. Her words fell on deaf ears, and even had they not, there was no chance of the dog waking up at them. Maybe that wasn't the point, though. Something about the way she spoke with him, like he was still there, made it easier to cope with. Maybe somewhere in there, Hideharu could still hear her. Or maybe he was watching them now, sitting and mourning right alongside them.

When she stood back up and returned to Akihiko's side, he remained standing, glued to his place, and closed his eyes to envision him, bounding through the fields with them.

"You were a good dog, Hideharu." He muttered finally. "...I'll miss you."

Shinji never budged, his eyes cast sidelong away from the body. Noticing his silence, Natsuo turned to him and prompted, "...Shinji? Have anything to say?"

The brunette refused to speak, his eyes red and glaring into the sky.

With nothing else to be done, Natsuo picked Hideharu back up for one last time. Miki ran forward to give him one more hug, trying so hard to hold in the tears, and gave him a kiss on the bridge of his snout. "Be a good boy," She told him. "We'll meet again someday."

He was lowered into his grave, and Natsuo buried him back into the earth.


	9. Chapter 9

Following Hideharu's death, Shinji became even more quiet. At school, he acted like he couldn't see anyone but Akihiko. When someone else talked to him, he ignored them, whether it be to tease him or offer him food or to apologize for almost running into him in the hallway. Sometimes he'd get so into the mood that he would ignore Akihiko, too. It took maybe a week for him to start returning back to normal, and even then, it felt like he had lost something. The light-hearted childishness that showed through that gruff exterior was suddenly gone. He was always serious, always stern and quiet and hollow. He stopped playing in the fields with Akihiko and Miki. It saddened the boy, it really did, to see his friend like that - but he knew he couldn't do anything to bring Hideharu back. More than that, he couldn't do anything to alleviate the guilt of that death from Shinji. Because the brunette had admitted, he would never forgive himself for what happened.

The evenings after school Akihiko spent, then, were often just him and Miki. The two of them would walk along the riverbed, sometimes race, though more often than not, he would just carry her around on his back. She always enjoyed that. They would sit in the trees and point out the stars, or talk about what they wanted to do when they got older. None of it was serious banter, though. Miki wanted to be a vet so that she could help animals like Hideharu get better if they were ever sick. Akihiko didn't know what he wanted to be. He had never really taken it seriously. He had years to think about it, anyway, right?

Since Shinji didn't go outdoors with them, he stayed inside and usually helped Riyeko with dinner. Now that Hideharu was dead, he wasn't a secret anymore; Satoru knew about him, as did the rest of the faction, and so did Riyeko. She sympathized greatly with Shinji's loss and so tried to do what she could to make him feel better. Letting him cook soon became that 'something'. "His eyes light up, and he gets all absorbed in what he's doing," Akihiko remembered her telling him. "I think it helps him forget everything else."

It took a few months, but eventually Shinji started coming out of the kitchens again in his time after school. He would race Akihiko from time to time, and participated in their play and their idle conversation, albeit sometimes less whole-heartedly than before. If something happened at school, or he was just not feeling up to leaving that night, he was back in the kitchen. When the weather got warmer, the Sanadas started to visit the beach without him on those nights when it was just the two of them, and Akihiko would swim while Miki collected seashells and dipped her feet in the water until nightfall, and they would go back to the orphanage. Things had finally gone back to what felt like normal again. Their struggles had molded them into different and more mature people than before, but that was normal, Satoru told them. Things happened. People grew up, changed, and moved on. That was life.

Usually, that 'moving on' never bothered Akihiko. Children came and went in his faction. When they graduated, they would leave the orphanage to start their own lives. Natsuo was maybe the only one who didn't; he graduated when Shinji and Akihiko were in 5th grade, but he never left the orphanage. He was too attached to the place to leave it - and laughing, he said that Satoru could use the extra hand, anyway.

Once in a blue moon, someone would get adopted. Children came into the orphanage, too, some of them much younger than Miki, some of them almost old enough to live on their own; all of them did their own thing and didn't associate more than your average impersonal roommates would. The orphanage actually got crowded after some incident on the Moonlight Bridge that killed a bunch of people in some kind of freak accident, and left a few orphan survivors in its wake. Most of those children were moved out of Kawatani, though. There were too many of them for the establishment to sustain.

Shinji and the Sanadas often remained indifferent. Riyeko was their exception.

The day that she left was, at first, like every other day. Akihiko had spent that day mostly in idleness, trying to break his record for the number of trees climbed in a day. He was nearing the end of his 5th grade year, with Miki in her 4th; that day had been a Sunday, and he didn't know how else to spend it. Both him and his sister returned to the orphanage that evening tired and covered in leaves. Climbing trees usually meant he fell out of one or two.

"You should have Chichi look at that gash," Miki was telling him.

Akihiko waved off her concern, brushing a hand past his forehead. Even now, there remained a white patch in the top-left corner of his forehead, which was now the product of habit more than anything else. Surprisingly, no one ever asked him why he had a perpetual cut there. "Look, it's not even bleeding anymore. I'll be fine."

The girl frowned, but they both entered the eating room without a word.

Riyeko was inside. She was putting down cups of milk and pieces of bread next to every cushion on the floor; a typical routine before dinner. She greeted them cheerfully - she was sweet on the Sanadas since they were friends with Shinji.

That never bothered Akihiko. Sometimes he got extra food for it. "Is dinner ready?"

"Almost. Sit down, it'll be right out."

Akihiko and Miki shuffled on their respective cushions until they were comfortable. Members of their faction, and some from others, all began to gradually wander into the room and take their seats, some drinking part of their milk and eating their bread while others waited until the main course of their meal arrived to indulge. They didn't have to wait long, because Riyeko and Shinji both departed the kitchen just minutes later and began handing out servings of curry rice, which was happily received by everyone.

Shinji headed back into the kitchen when everything had been distributed. His own bowl sat nearby the Sanadas, while Riyeko, who often took on the job that Shinji was now handling, seated herself on his cushion and watched them eat.

When Akihiko started to speed up his ravenous eating, she asked, "How is it?"

As if his devouring it wasn't any indication. "It's really good! Spicy."

Miki took another delicate spoonful of it. After swallowing, she asked, "What is it?"

"It's a recipe for curry rice and Shinji and I thought up together. He cooked it all on his own." She smiled fondly, "You should tell him you like it. He'd be happy to hear."

"Shinji made tonight's dinner? Wow, he's gotten really good at this."

"That's because he takes after _yours truly_," Riyeko made a dramatic hand gesture, which brought smiles to both of the siblings' faces. She laughed and waved it off afterwards. "Just kidding. He's actually taught me a few things myself, you know. He's a natural at it."

Akihiko couldn't bring himself to talk again until he had devoured what was left of his dish. There was never enough to completely fill him up, but he was pleased with what he got tonight. At least it wasn't soup again. "So, now we'll have two great cooks in the kitchen!"

Riyeko smiled, though there was a melancholy sense to it.

The dinner following was expectably short. Shinji stepped out of the kitchen when he was done wrapping up affairs in the kitchen, and Riyeko stood up to check after him. As he seated himself on his particular cushion and picked up his bowl to begin eating, Miki sipped at what was left of her milk and made sure to compliment his expertise in preparing food now. Akihiko pitched in, and their conjoined praise brought both flattered embarrassment and genuine happiness to his face, however much he looked down and tried to hide it.

Both siblings glanced up when Riyeko stepped back out of the kitchen. Shinji carried on eating his own small portion of the meal he prepared.

"All right, everyone! Tonight is my last night here with you." A chorus of sad moans and inquiries rose up to meet this statement. "I remember when I was one of you guys, growing up in this place, and I was begging the last chef to teach me how to cook... now I've got a pest of my own." She stuck her tongue out at Shinji, who blushed and kept his eyes strictly down on his food. "I've got so many memories here, good and bad... I've even watched some of you grow up myself." The woman laughed and looked across the room at one of the faction parents. "Listen to me, Misao. I'm only in my twenties, and I sound so old."

"You will be, before you know it!"

"Don't remind me!" Everyone laughed, amiable in the light-hearted albeit bittersweet atmosphere. She paused wistfully before she went on, "But after all my time here, I've decided I need to move out and try to pursue a career. Thanks to everyone in the orphanage who helped me get enough money to enroll in culinary school - it's been something I've wanted to do my whole life. I couldn't have done it without you all."

Miki looked particularly upset. "Riyeko-san is leaving?" She turned to Shinji, who was just taking the last one or two bites of his meal. "Did you know, Shinii-chan?"

The brunette nodded solemnly. "She got the acceptance letter from the school she applied for a few months ago. She decided to stay here until she was given the okay to move into a dorm closer to the school, so that they had more time to look for a new chef." Given the circumstances, he was surprisingly calm. "She told me as soon as she got the news."

Akihiko nudged his friend playfully. "Are you the new chef?"

"Nah. I don't know who it is. They had a hard time finding someone to take over the position, but I think they'll be coming in next week." He absently collected his now-empty dish, stacking it with Akihiko's and Miki's, standing to his feet but remaining there until he finished. "Riyeko told the new chef about me, so she wants me to help her get adjusted to everything when she moves in. But that's the only job I was given."

He was just making his way to the kitchen when Riyeko intercepted him. "Could I speak with you one more time before I go, Shinji?"

The boy looked nervously up at her. Akihiko, watching them, noticed how Shinji had a tendency to soften in her presence. "Oh - sure, I'm just going to put these away."

۞

She followed him into the kitchen, where he set down the dirty dishes in the large communal sink where he would be required to clean them later. That was one chore he wouldn't miss doing when the new chef moved in. He was fine with cooking, and he made a respectable effort to keep things tidy as he prepared the food - Riyeko had commented many times that it was astounding how OCD he was when it came to cooking - but cleaning the piles and piles of dishes afterwards, he could do without.

"When I graduated from high school, the orphanage bought this for me," The girl was saying. He gave her his undivided attention when she walked across the room to open a drawer, from which she retrieved a small, compact knife. "I've held onto it ever since then. I've used it a lot, but I keep the blade sharp." She smiled and handed it to the brunette, "They engraved it special for me. But I want you to have it, as a memento."

He held out his hands, and she placed the blade there, delicately, folding her fingers over his palm. "Don't ever forget where you started out."

Only when her hands slipped away from his did he turn the blade, seeking out the engraving written into the blade handle. It read, 'Kawatani Orphanage 1994 Graduation'.

He wasn't sure why it came to him then. But the wave of emotion that came made his heart twist, and It hit him that he would probably never see Riyeko ever again.

"Hey. Don't make that face, either," The dark brunette woman brought her hand to the much shorter boy's shoulder, lifting his chin with the other. Gently and yet forcibly meeting the depths of her amber-hued eyes, Shinji found himself grimacing against the tears collecting on his eyelids. Standing there almost evoked the feeling as if Shinji were a child again. He was brought back to that very same time where he had been a newcomer here, a child as young as three, when she had allowed him to stay with her in the kitchen while she cooked her meals. Back in those days, he remembered feeling so empty. He hadn't met Akihiko or Miki, and the whole world was strange, alien... he knew no one. He had nothing. He was a poor orphan boy, emerging from the depths of the unknown without parents, siblings, a home - nothing to him but his name.

But now, here he was. The orphanage here had become such an overwhelmingly large part of his life, it was impossible to think of life without it. Riyeko had always been there, indulging his childish interest in cooking which had grown to be much more than that. Akihiko had become his best friend, his little brother; and Miki, too, his own little sister...

Her voice pulled him back. "It'll freeze that way, you know."

He gave her a somber smile. "I'll miss you, Riyeko."

The woman bent over and kissed her lips to his forehead, something that he shut his eyes and felt his cheeks flush with pink at; when he did part them again, it was to see her tell him goodbye, to see her walk away from him with such calm and even strides that foretold her confidence in the path ahead. Wherever that path led, he could only hope it led her to a happy and peaceful end that allowed her to look back on her life and realize how much fulfillment she had brought not only to herself, but those she touched on the way. While he watched her, she refused to look back. Once she reached the door, she did.

"I'll miss you too, Shinji." It was the first and last time that Shinji had heard, would ever hear, her voice charged with such emotion. "Goodbye."

The door closed behind her, and Shinji gazed back at the knife, gleaming in his palm.

۞

In the few days that followed, the orphanage's loss of Riyeko was felt not just in their hearts, but in their stomachs. Shinji and the Sanadas obligated themselves to get up and go to school in the morning, as it had become a routine, a part of life, for years now; when they got back home, made the relatively long walk back to the plains and the orphanage that rested there, they got home with their bodies yearning for the chance to eat. The new chef had yet to arrive, though. Satoru told them that she had been delayed, and it would be another few days before she could make it - until then, they would have to improvise.

By 'improvise', they meant, essentially, starve. As much as the children loved him, they could not bring themselves to be anything less than honest that he just downright could _not_ cook. The other three faction parents were in a similar condition. None of them had ever learned to do it, was all. Shinji offered to take up the job in an effort to create at least _some_ kind of semi-edible meal for the many hungry mouths, but the parents refused on the premise that Shinji was too young and might accidentally mess something up. "I could do better than they could," Akihiko and Miki had listened to him bitterly complain. "I can hardly stand the smell of whatever this shit they put in front of us is."

When the chef was delayed yet another day, irritation became even more apparent for the woman's tardiness, and it was helped little by the fact that many of them were all going hungry with lack of proper food. Upon finally arriving, she was met with both praise and a looming sense of irritability that came with their first impression of this woman; someone who could not fathom punctuality in the most basic sense.

That particular day - the new chef, Mikako's, first day of preparing dinner - was March 26th. Everyone had gotten out of school for spring break, and were enjoying their very small window of opportunity to relax between the last school year and the year to come. Shinji was so restless at the thought of leaving the new chef unattended that he told Akihiko and Miki he would have to pass on visiting the beach; he couldn't possibly stand one more day of half-ass prepared food. The Sanadas agreed with him, so there were no complaints.

However, when the two fair-maned children returned back home that evening, tired and dripping wet from the sandy beaches, Shinji was full of nothing _but_ complaints.

He followed the two siblings on their trek to the sleeping room, where they dried themselves off with towels and wrung out their clothes, still drenched in salt water and grains of sand. Miki took Akihiko's soaked set of clothes after he changed and folded them, telling him that she would put them all in the laundry before dinner, which he absently responded to with his consent. All the while, Shinji regaled them with every nitpicking detail that Mikako had gotten wrong; she used one teaspoon too much of this, spilled that ingredient into the dish, or put this other ingredient in way before she was supposed to. Eventually Akihiko stopped and asked, "Was she really that bad?"

"She forgot to turn the _stove_ off, Aki." Shinji grabbed the younger boy's shoulders to express the extent of his seriousness. "What kind of _moron_ forgets to turn the stove off?"

The boy frowned, "Isn't that dangerous?"

"No shit, Sherlock! That's one of the first things you learn _not_ to do!"

All three of them halted in their steps when a voice broke through the wooden corridors of the orphanage. "Shinji!" It was a voice that Akihiko didn't recognize himself, but one look at the brunette's face made him aware that Shinji, unfortunately, did. "Come back!"

"She can't tell a cup from a teaspoon, Aki. She didn't even know what a fucking spatula was. This woman is driving me insane."

Akihiko must not have gotten his point. "...What _is_ a spatula?"

The brunette just shook his head and left, unable to find words.

Miki was rounding up their soaked laundry and told her brother that she would be right back; all she had to do was throw it all in the washer and fix up the settings.

As he waited, he lied himself back on his bed in the room, taking a moment to glance around the expanse of it. It had never changed, not once, from the time he first came here. Except the fact that he had gotten considerably taller since then. He found it hard to believe that there was a point in time where he was so short that seeing over the edge of his bed when he was standing next to it had been difficult; now it came up to his thighs.

Those nostalgic thoughts were quickly interrupted by the door flying back open. Miki had claimed that she would be 'right back', but laundry usually took her a little longer. The boy was just turning his head as he commented, "That was fast-"

"She forgot to cook the sauce for the dish." He was biting his lip, an expression of Shinji's that Akihiko had learned to mean 'very irritated'. "That makes up _half_ the recipe. I refuse to ask how this woman could cook her way out of a paper bag, because she can't. I had to get out of there. She would lose her fucking head if it wasn't tacked onto her shoulders."

"So she's not as good at cooking as Riyeko is. Maybe she's just nervous, Shinji."

"Maybe she's just intellectually challenged."

Akihiko rolled his eyes and folded his arms back behind his head, his eyes growing heavy with fatigue. Today had been a long and busy one, as he had struggled to beat his last record time for swimming up and down the length of the beach. Miki raced him, while full-well knowing that she could never beat him, and went back to collecting seashells. Now that she had a sizeable collection from many past trips to the beach, what she would do was search for new, exquisite shells, which she would take back home and compare against the seashells she already had. If she liked one more than any of the others, she would discard the old one for the new. Whatever shells she brought home that were left behind were dumped into the nearby river. Why did she collect them, Akihiko had asked many times? She told him she didn't know. She just liked that thrill of finding such a beautiful work of art in the dull and unremarkable sand which hid such beauty in the confines of the earth.

He let his eyes close. He felt at peace. Next year would be his last of elementary school; then he would have middle school to contend with. Then high school, and college... where would he go from there, he asked himself? To this day, he hadn't a clue...

Something hit his leg. Akihiko blinked and looked over, still somewhat sleepily, and noticed that Shinji was uncomfortably still with his eyes on the door. "Do you smell that?"

The platinum boy half-complained, "What did she do now?"

"It smells like something is burning." There was a gravely dark note in Shinji's voice that sparked some fear in Akihiko. "I smell... smoke. Don't you?"

That wasn't a big deal, was it? "Maybe she burned something in the kitchen..."

Shinji shoved himself off the bed and ran out of the room. If for no reason other than the fact that the brunette's panicked behavior had set him on edge, Akihiko jumped off the mattress as well and chased after him, coughing once or twice when the lingering scent of smoke became more and more oppressive in the air. The two boys ran through the dining room and burst through the door to the kitchen, finding that without a doubt, this was the source of the smell; a raging fire had started on the stove and was now proceeding across the contents of the counter, with Mikako fanning the fire with a towel.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The brunette was the one who took the initiative. Just as the edge of the towel also caught on fire, Shinji filled a bowl with water from the sink and dumped it in the woman's direction, putting out the weak flame. Taming the monstrous fire that was extending from the stove was another story. "Start throwing water on it! Aki, you look around and check whether we have a fire extinguisher!"

He coughed again, waving the smoke from his face. "D-Do I ask Satoru?"

"I don't care what you do, just find one!"

With the adrenaline starting to kick in, the boy turned and raced back out of the kitchen, striding down the many long wooden corridors of the orphanage in search of one of the adults - Satoru or not, one of them, any of them, would have to know what to do. What if he couldn't find them? What if they couldn't stop the fire? Would the orphanage burn to the ground, just like that, taking all the years of life and memories along with it?

He turned another corner, whereupon he crashed right into one of the adults.

The woman was taken aback for a moment. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

"There's a fire in the kitchen!" He panted, pointing frantically in the direction of the kitchen. "We have to stop it before it burns the whole building down!"

"Oh, good lord!" The hazel-brunette veered around and ran back down the hallway from where she came. "Satoru, Misao! There's a fire in the kitchen!"

"What?" The raven-haired man who Akihiko so swiftly recognized appeared from one of the doorways. "What the hell-! That woman has only been here for one night and she's already started a fire in the kitchen?"

His fellow adult shoved past him. "You can complain after we stop the fire!"

"I'll find Hachiro!" The woman huffed, taking off in another direction. Akihiko chased after the two who were on their way to the kitchen, suppressing his panic enough to retain some of his calm and asked him where the fire extinguisher was.

Satoru's answer made his heart sink. "We don't have one!"

_Please tell me Shinji managed to put it out!_

Breaking back into the dining room, there was no sign of Shinji, and yet flames were now licking at the open doorway leading inside. Akihiko darted his way around the two men who protested his action, and once inside, he saw the brunette tirelessly struggling to fill up the glass measuring cup with water and dump it on the flames. He did this time after time, and had actually managed to stop the fire from eating away at the kitchen counter - but that didn't stop it from traveling onward and out of the room. By now, a layer of smoke had begun to accumulate in the air, and Akihiko could hardly breathe through it.

"Shinji, you have to get out of this room!"

"I have to stop the fire!" He, too, coughed several times, and gasped for air. "There's no way the fire trucks will make it here in time to save the orphanage!"

"That doesn't matter! You need to get the hell out of here before it traps us!"

He stood still in one perilous moment of indecision, and in it, Akihiko grabbed his arm and jerked him toward the door. Thank God, the brunette followed him without protest, and they skirted past the flames in the doorway without getting lit themselves.

Satoru was the only one in the dining room when they emerged. He ran up to the two boys and grabbed Shinji's shoulders, "Where's Mikako? Wasn't she in there?"

"She went to go warn everyone!" All of them were yelling to be heard over the uproar of the flames. "I'm not sure where she went!"

Satoru took another long look at the fire corroding at the door borderframe between the kitchen and the dining room, and made an expression that could not be described as anything short of anguished. "...I don't think we can stop it! We have to evacuate everyone!"

Akihiko's heart plunged. Were they going to lose their home...?

Shinji brought a strong hand to the platinum boy's shoulder, his eyes meeting Akihiko's with utmost seriousness. When he met them, the glow of the fire illuminated the calm and earthen tone, adding a viciousness and urgency there that all the more instilled in him the sobering truth of their situation. "You find Miki, okay? I'll go with Satoru!"

_Miki._ Akihiko felt his heart start racing. "Okay! Be careful!" He grimaced, putting one of his own hands on his companion's shoulder. "We'll all make it out!"

The brunette nodded at him, and he took off at Satoru's command.

Running through the orphanage, Akihiko found it hard to believe how rapidly it had degenerated into such a state of chaos. Some of the children from different factions were all fleeing through these hallways, coughing and sputtering and shouting over the noise at one another. The faction parents were trying to calm everyone down as they evacuated, doing head counts every few minutes to ensure nobody was getting left behind; another of the parents was outside, checking everyone's conditions, while others still ran back in and fled with as many of their belongings as they could grab in their arms. People flashed past Akihiko in all directions, even as he himself was running. He knew where the wash room was. As long as he could get in there, and find Miki, he could make sure she was safely inside and go back in for Shinji - they would all be okay, they would all make it out safely, and he had to reiterate this time and time again in his mind to steer away from a sense of panic.

"Miki!" His shout reverberated through the contained space that was the laundry room, his eyes squinting through the haze of accumulating smoke. This room was some distance from the kitchen, and so it was likely one of the least affected rooms - but even still, he had to regulate his breathing and hold one of his sleeves over his mouth in an attempt to filter the smoke away from the oxygen he needed. "Miki, where are you?"

He darted about the room, his eyes stinging and red from the polluted air. But he caught no sight of her. She had just gone in here, hadn't she? Where was she now? Maybe she had already escaped? But what if she hadn't? He would never forgive himself if he had just waltzed outside under the assumption that she was okay, and she ended up hurt!

He flew back out. The back door of the orphanage had been blocked off by the fire, and so everyone was rushing to the front door. Akihiko lingered in place by the laundry room before taking off for the sleeping room assigned to his faction; little did he know, Miki flashed past him when squeezing her way through the mob, headed back for the laundry room in the fear that her brother went there in search for her.

The sleeping room was just as empty. Akihiko rummaged through the blankets, the beds, crawled down to the floor and looked around, but there was no sign of his little sister. With panic finally starting to set in, he gave in to a fit of coughing and brought himself to another shaky stand. "Miki! Miki, please, if you hear me, say something!"

Maybe she really had gotten out. He smothered himself with his sleeve again, withstanding another barrage of coughs before he squeezed out of the orphanage's front door, in frantic search for any glimpse of his kinsman.

Shinji ran up an instant later; the rest of their faction had already been evacuated by Satoru. In fact, it looked like a majority of them had all successfully escaped. But one look at the brunette's face told Akihiko that he was as clueless as himself; "Where's Miki?"

"She's not out here? I can't find her anywhere!"

Shinji grimaced and ran past him into the building. Akihiko gave chase.

They went again through every room they thought she might be in; the dining room was completely absorbed by the fire, as was the kitchen, and it was now crawling closer to the door in its ravenous feast of their home. They both shouted for the girl at the top of their smoke-strained lungs, but no shouts returned back to them. They checked the sleeping room again, and found nothing. They ran back to the laundry room, and still, nothing. It started to become difficult to differentiate the infrastructure of the building from the fire and the black air that accompanied it. Akihiko started hitting walls, pillars, and had to shout up ahead to Shinji once or twice so as to not get separated from him, too.

Finally, it was Akihiko who heard something light, high-pitched, near one of the nearby bathrooms. He darted off toward it with another call for Shinji, bursting into the room to see that Miki was just about to depart it; she had been searching for them both inside when she heard their voices, and started to call back. "Akinii!" She burst through the doorframe toward them, her small, fragile, trembling body pressed needily against him. He held her close, too, feeling tears swell in his eyes at the happiness of being reunited with her when he was beginning to fear that he had lost her. "Shinii! Are you two okay?"

"It's okay," The fair-skinned boy, too, was trembling. "I'm here with you now."

"We're fine! But I think the fire is just about to reach the front door!" The oldest of the trio ushed them off down the hallway. "We have to go, now!"

With a few coughs, they all took off running for their last and only means of escape.

As small and fragile as Miki was, she could still run fast enough to generally keep up with the two boys. It was Shinji that Akihiko had started to worry about; since he had been up close to the fire for the longest period of time, he was wheezing so badly that he couldn't run straight, and his movements were becoming weak and lethargic.

Out of concern for his friend, he ran up alongside him and tried to keep him on track as they made it out toward the door. They turned their last corner and found themselves in the main hallway, the last stretch between them and their freedom, and Akihiko shouldered himself up next to his friend so as to keep him on track and ensure they all made it out safely.

But he hadn't expected them to cut it so close. He never imagined that those few feet of space between him and Shinji as opposed to Miki would mean so much.

They were just running underneath the last major support beam when the whole world exploded into a huge confliction of crunching wood and roaring fire. Miki heard it all above her and strained herself to run faster, but felt the oppressive heat so near her that it began to terrify her. Something collided with the ground just to her right, but she kept running. She kept running and running, but she must not have been fast enough, for she felt something impact her from that same side and knock her off-balance.

She collapsed with a shriek, a sound that was swallowed by the roar of the crackling fire and devastation surrounding them; pain shot up her leg like an electric current, her ankle smashed beneath some large and imposing weight that suddenly thrust itself onto her. The world around her spun, her perception clouded by smoke and the flames. The deafening crackle of splintering wood and the building's collapse further crippled her senses, all she had left to reassure her that she was still conscious. "Nii-chan!" Her panicked scream put the boisterous noise to shame. Her hand went out, reaching blindly for the boy who was but a few feet's distance away, blocked from her view by an ignited support beam. "Nii-ch-" But she could not call for him. The smoke was overwhelming, stinging her eyes, stealing her breath away. She broke off to a fit of coughing, the flames eating away at her pinned legs.

Every gasp making her weaker than the last, she reached down and grabbed the knee of her trapped leg, pulling with all the strength she could muster to free herself. But it was in vain; it wouldn't budge. For all the blood she could see, through the black, gray-red haze, pooling at her ankle... her leg felt numb. It didn't hurt. And her head, she felt... cloudy...

"M-Miki?" Through all her terror, regardless of the noise that surrounded her, she heard her brother's voice. Tears poured from her eyes. She opened her mouth to call for him, for she was scared, terrified, and she wanted him. Wanted him to come and save her from this terrible nightmare, hold her, tell her that she was okay... that he would never let anything, ever, hurt her again as long as he lived. But the smoke had stolen her voice. All that came were hoarse croaks, impossible to hear over the turmoil that engulfed her.

Her heart stopped when she heard him. "Miki! Where are you? I-I'm coming!"

The girl pressed her face against the stinging soot on the floor, hearing the rumble above her precede the building's continued collapse. More of the orphanage's infrastructure combusted, crashing around her and yet never onto her, surrounding her entire world in a haze of smoke and flames. She was trapped. There was no way that he could reach her. She heard him shout again, but she couldn't distinguish the words, for the weight of something immense finally began to crush into her back. Still more tears glowed in her eyes.

But for some reason, she... smiled.

He couldn't save her this time.

Yet she was happy. What a funny feeling... like the thought of him alone was enough to comfort her in her final moments. All this time, he had given her everything he could...

He did his best, until the very end.

_ I'll miss you, Akinii-chan._

۞

No! Why did this have to happen? Where had she gone? She had been right behind him! No, no, he couldn't let this happen! He couldn't lose her, too!

There wasn't the slightest bit of hesitation in his step when he skidded to a stop, his feet stinging with the embers that gathered there, and turned to launch himself back toward the festering pit of fire and death that had emerged from the same hallways that once sheltered them. All they had to call a home for as long as either of them could remember, and it, too, was being stolen from them. But he didn't care. No... he could handle anything. As long as he had her. As long as she wasn't taken from him, too...!

But something caught his arm. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Let me go!" If he had been conscious of himself, the elevated pitch of his own voice would have startled him. But he didn't care. The silver-haired boy grimaced and fought with all his strength against the grip of the slightly taller, slightly older, slightly stronger figure that had taken hold of his arm. Akihiko could not break it. Tears began to stream from the corners of his own eyes as hysterics bled through his voice and into his violent movements, and he, too, screamed; "Let me go, Shinji! I have to save her!"

"Aki, you can't-" The borderframe of the orphanage's entrance - their only prayer for safe escape - began to sag, corroding away into a film of ash onto the blackened wooden flooring. "It's too late! You're gonna die if you go back!"

"I'll die before I let her burn to death without trying to save her!"

Satoru's voice, hardly discernable from the uproar, called in at them. "You two, get out of there before the whole building crashes down on you!"

With the strength granted to him in his fit of panic, Akihiko made a final, last ditch effort to throw the entire weight of his body against that grip Shinji had on him by jerking himself backwards, and his arm, red and imprinted by the brunette boy's fingers, tore itself free. He turned, again to launch himself after the silenced screams of his sister, but just when he had placed all weight on one leg to sprint away, he felt something catch it. Shinji had intercepted the younger boy's foot with his own; a single pertinent tug sent him slipping on the ashes, losing balance and falling to the floor with something between a protest and a miserable wail. All attempts to struggle away were in vain against Shinji.

He could do nothing. He was powerless. He grabbed at the scalding floor, but all that he clenched into his palms was the gray and stinging embers, laced with splinters and debris - there was nothing to hold onto. He had been so close, and yet... she was gone...

۞

"Shinji!" Satoru's voice was suddenly much stronger, much clearer, when they both neared their passage of escape. He clamped his teeth against his bottom lip, biting it hard so that the pain reassured him that he was still awake, still sprinting to the door; it was with great struggle that he finally tasted the kiss of fresh air just outside the building. The boy in question felt a ripple of weakness run through his body, as the burst of adrenaline strength that surged through his body began to wear out at the first sign of relief. Breathing in all the smoke had made him as weak and dizzy as the others, and carrying the deadweight of his friend did not help matters. "...Did he collapse?"

Shinji did his best to stay on his feet. Satoru's arms encompassed him, helping to support both him and the fair-maned boy who was slung over his shoulder. "No," He couldn't speak the single word without wheezing. But his answer was vastly unnecessary if for no reason but that at it, Akihiko started to struggle again.

"Let me go! I... I-! Miki!"

The adult's eyes widened with shock. "Where's Miki?"

"One of the beams collapsed on her..." Finally being outside the grip of the caustic flames and the smoke that belched out of them like a black fog, his head became exhaustingly heavy. His body was weak. He had to gasp in great quantities of air just to feel a fleeting wisp of the oxygen that was necessary to sustain his life slip into his lungs. Akihiko struggled from his shoulder; he was too delirious to sense it. Perhaps it was for that reason that the impending despair of realizing that Miki was gone, that she had almost no chance of survival back inside of the building, was so subdued in him. "She got... trapped..."

If Satoru heard him, he gave no indication. Shinji blinked his hazy, red-rimmed eyes, trying to find the caretaker with them; but he was absent. No... instead, turning his perception onto the orphanage, a blackened shadow of what it had once been, he saw the adult had been forced to put a choke hold on the friend he had tried so hard to save. Akihiko had tried running back into the building. At Satoru's stern command, some of the older children from the orphanage ran up to his side, helping to restrain the boy who still was screaming and fighting against them in his hysterics.

Shinji had promised her, hadn't he?

_"Akinii needs someone to look after him as much as I do!"_

He remembered sitting in that waiting room in the hospital, spending every restless moment in fear that Aki wouldn't make it through the accident.

_ "If something happens to me... will you make sure he doesn't get hurt?"_

But it should have never come to this...

"Miki!" Akihiko's cries echoed in the stagnant air, unchallenged by the grave silence that was the rest of the orphanage's members, clustered tightly around each other as if seeking consolance from the presence of one another. Akihiko was not among them. He, the few who restrained him, and Shinji were the only ones who stood on their lonesome between the mob who dared not breathe a word and the fires that even still, dancing with a malicious mischief, ate away at what was left of their home. "Miki...!"


	10. Chapter 10

Evening had settled in. Vibrant reds and oranges stretched across the indigo sky; there was a horrified silence in the air, filled by the faint murmuring of the crickets.

"...couldn't save the building. We prevented the fire from spreading..."

"But we got here after the collapse. We couldn't save anyone who was trapped."

"It's all right. ...head count, everyone was accounted for. Except..."

The adults were quiet for a moment. "Except his sister, huh."

"...can hear you... be quiet."

Akihiko felt his eyes burn. _Like I can't tell that you're talking about me._

He could hear his name spoken under the breath of every mutter that surrounded him. His fellow children in the orphanage, the caretakers, the authorities... everyone's concerns were slandered on him, everyone's eyes were sympathetic on him. He didn't want their sympathy. Their sympathy didn't change what had happened. It didn't bring Miki back. Perhaps worst of all, their sympathy did nothing more than reinforce the realization he had come to; he was worthless. Powerless... and his sister was gone because of it.

It must have already been hours since they escaped the building. Time was hazed to him; he would have believed it if someone had told him he had only been sitting there for little more than a few minutes, or conversely, for an eternity. His tears had eventually stopped flowing. His screams were silenced. His throat felt parched and his voice was hoarse, gone, his eyes sore and dry. Had such things not been the case, he was sure he would have been in the same fit of disarray as he was in when he was first dragged from the building.

"Hey, Aki." He had been deaf to the rustle of Natsuo's approaching footsteps in the grass. His eyes remained coldly transfixed on the grass beneath his hunched body, unwilling to see or speak or quite honestly, exist, if it was up to him.

But it wasn't. He could change nothing. He was worthless.

The darker brunette held out a steady hand to offer a cup filled to the brim with fresh, clear water. "You need to drink some water and let the medics check you out, all right? You probably inhaled a lot of the smoke inside of the orphanage."

He still refused to look up. "I'm not thirsty."

"I'm not asking you, Akihiko." The boy rose up to his feet. "...Where's Shinji?"

The younger boy trembled at the very name. "I don't _care_."

"Aki, why would you say that? He's your friend! He saved your life!"

"I don't care!" Rage blistered in the boy's fragile body as he stood, his throat constricting as if to cry, but tears never came to him. Chances are, he just didn't have any left. "I don't care what he did - I hate him! I wish he had died instead!"

Natsuo jolted back at this. Satoru, somewhere in the vicinity discussing matters with the firefighters and the paramedics, also glanced over; one or two of the orphanage's children looked up with pity or shock, and others drew further into themselves. "...I know how terrible your loss must feel. But..." But Natsuo's voice choked in his throat. Akihiko didn't dignify him with a response; he stood, his movements slow, drifting, and mustered the strength to carry himself in the direction of the distant riverbank.

No one followed him. Not even Natsuo, for he knew that regardless of whether or not he did, he would never find the words to ease the boy's anguish.

۞

Listless in the aftermath of the day's tragedy, Natsuo found himself wandering back to the authorities. They hadn't left yet, but by the commotion and chatter amongst them, it sounded like they were wrapping up business and preparing to depart. He found one of the paramedics in the crowd of personnel. "Where are the victims of the fire that you took in?"

"Some of them are in the back of the ambulance. None of them were seriously hurt, so we decided not to transport them to the hospital."

"So we can see them?" He was given a nod in return. Natsuo's eyes grew solemn and distant. "You have one named 'Shinjiro' with you. May I see him?"

"Ah, him." The male sighed heftily, "Yeah, he's just over here."

Rows and rows of ambulances, fire trucks, law enforcement... the destruction of the orphanage would have many long-term effects that went far beyond today's upset, and the loss of Miki. It would take months, perhaps years, to rebuild the orphanage... that being if the city even found it a worthwhile project to fund. All the children would have to be deported to the nearest orphanage, which was miles away, much farther than a walk's distance away from Tatsumi Port Island. After all he and the other children had been through, now this had come along, stealing yet more from the very little they had left.

"All right," The man's gruff voice reobtained Natsuo's attention, encouraging him to look up. Sure enough, sitting there upright in the stretcher was Shinji, his face half-obscured by the breathing apparatus they had attached to his mouth. "Here he is."

Natsuo could not bring himself to say anything extensive. "You doing okay?"

The brunette looked away for a moment - his body sagged as if to sigh and his hand went up to the mask, pawing at it with a look that betrayed his vexation.

"I'll leave you two at it. We'll release him when we're about to leave."

"Thanks." The darker of the brunettes manuevered his way into the back of the ambulance, sitting alongside the stretcher and making himself as comfortable as was possible on such a hard surface. "Hah, you look thrilled."

Shinji took this taunt as incentive to grimace and peel the apparatus away from his nose and mouth, tossing it aside. "Stupid dickheads wouldn't let me take it off." But however strong his words, it was easy to tell that the smoke inhalation had hindered his ability to speak. His voice was rougher, more hoarse, but less so than it had been when he and Akihiko first escaped from the building. Chances are, he would be better in a few days.

"...So he hates me, huh."

It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement.

Natsuo sighed, pulled his legs up against himself to wrap his arms loosely around them; "You know he doesn't mean that, Shinji."

The younger brunette smiled bitterly and looked off to the distance.

"He's devastated right now. You know how important Miki was to him. To both of you... Miki was special. As much as you hurt, imagine how Aki must feel. His feelings are just out of control. He doesn't hate you. After everything, how could he hate you?"

If his words served as any comfort to Shinji, the boy did not say.

۞

There were many times that Akihiko had come to the riverbank in the past. When he got in a fight with Shinji or one of the other foster children, he would come here; when he had a bad dream, rather than wake up his sister or Satoru-san, he would come and sit here and watch the moonlight play off of the water's gleaming surface. The burble of the river was soothing to him, somehow. Gave him something to focus on aside from the silence. He would try and inspect his reflection, too... the odd distortions created by the moving surface had always served to amuse him... but today, it's charm was useless to comfort him.

Everything hurt. His lungs hurt, his head hurt, his eyes, his throat. Most of all, his heart... hurt. It was strange to think, but never had he felt this way before, as if something was burning itself through his chest, into him, a forever stinging agony that could not be alleviated by any physical means. His fingers clawed at his chest through the worn fabric of his shirt; he wanted to tear it out of him. But even then, he knew that it would not help.

It was scarred into him forever. For as long as he lived, he would have to bear this pain. This pain was all he had left in Miki's memory. He still couldn't believe it... she had been taken away from him, and left in her place this gaping hole that nothing could fill.

He thought he knew what it felt like to lose something back when Hideharu died. The in the days that followed, no matter how happy he was, a part of him was always silenced and cold. He was numb. He could not realize the pain of losing the life of someone close to him, and he thought that was what it meant to grieve.

But he knew, now. It was so much worse than that. This is what loss truly felt like.

His eyes brimmed with tears once more at the thought, tears he thought he had run out of by now. ...Why had this happened? Why did she have to die? Couldn't he have done more? Something, anything... if he had died alongside her, if he could do nothing more than that, at least it would have been more than bearing witness to it...?

Would dying have atoned for it? And if not, would dying now at least serve to free him from the eternal hurt that his sister's loss had torn in him? Right now, he would have loved nothing more than to see her again. She would have known how to cheer him up. She was always happy, and that made him happy, too. She was always so bright and cheerful...

"Hey." The single word that interrupted his many thoughts served to startle him. He sniffled rather loudly and tried to wipe away any traces of the tears that stained his face. "It's getting late. You should come back. They're deciding where we'll stay for the night."

"I don't want to go back." He clenched his fists, releasing them again. For a moment, he stared down at his fingers as he flexed them in and out... grasping for something that was not there. "There's nothing to go back to."

He heard shifting in the grass. Akihiko could feel the presence of Shinji beside him; they weren't close enough to touch, but he was close enough to feel the air that the boy displaced with his movements. "Here. I brought you some food and milk." The smell forced his eyes over to see what the brunette was offering, and just as he said, there was a steaming mug of thick, cream-topped milk with one of the larger rolls of bread. He hadn't so much as sniffed a bit of food since he was pulled from the orphanage, nor had he drank anything - his body craved sustinence, however much he refused to give it any.

But he still had enough will to reject it. "I don't want it."

"You need to eat, Aki." The boy's frustration was clear in his voice, although subdued. When the lighter haired of the two only folded his arms, resting them atop his legs and burying his face in them, Shinji sighed and didn't prompt him further. "...I'm sure you don't care to hear me say this, but... I know how you feel."

"No, you don't," He hissed between his teeth.

"When Hideharu died, I kept thinking... I should have done something more. He wouldn't have died if I had run out there when I had the chance." He shook his head, glaring like the memory had hurt him. "But, really, what if I had done things different, and he still died? Would I still think I could do more? What if I got myself killed in the process - would that have made things any better than what they were now?" When Akihiko remained silent, he went on, "...No one can tell you if doing things different would mean that anything changed. We can't go back and change it. Life goes on, anyway..."

"Shut up!" The youngest of the boys felt tears burn against his eyelids again. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about!"

"You know, she was always so happy... it was like, you couldn't do a damn thing wrong in her eyes. I bet if she was here to pat us on the shoulder and tell us that we did our best, that she was just happy that we were all right, she would do it..." The words came so agonized from his throat. "It's so unfair, isn't it...? She had something to live for. She meant so much to us, and yet we couldn't..." He clenched his fists. "Why did it happen to her...?"

"Shut _up_! It's your fault this happened! It's your fault that she's-!"

Akihiko stood up from his place with a start, his whole body tense with the flood of hysterics and resentment that streamed through him. But what he hadn't expected to do was accidentally kick over the mug of steaming milk in his rush of anger; the substance fell from the cup, splattering and searing the brunette who had been seated beside him.

Shinji gave no indication of his pain aside from a grimace, as much from shock as it was from pain. Akihiko's words caught in his throat. He realized, for just an instant, exactly what it was that he was doing. Shinji had saved his life... he was genuinely concerned for him, his welfare, and all Akihiko had done in return was hurt him.

But he was angry. He was angry because Shinji was right. No matter how much he begged and pleaded, he was completely helpless to change what had happened...

The guilt that consumed him in that one moment was enough to release the tears from his eyes, once more streaming past his cheeks, but he made no sound that betrayed his fit of upset; the silence was staggering as neither party spoke, lost for words.

"...I'm sorry." Shinji's voice croaked, quieted by the current of wind. He lifted the hand he used to clutch at his scalded arm, gazing at the burns on his flesh. "I knew if you went back in there... that it was too late to save her. You would have died for nothing..."

His voice wavered, that gradual breaking down that preluded tears.

"If both of you died, I... I would have lost everything. I never wanted to feel like that again..." His body convulsed, forcing something mimicking laughter from his lips. "But look at what happened. I don't blame you for hating me. I know... Miki was all you had. Now that she's gone, you must feel the same way I always did, and I..." He grabbed a fistful of his own hair, doing all he could not to cry out. Instead, his voice fell so hushed that he could barely hear himself mutter, "Why the fuck wasn't it me...?"

Akihiko couldn't breathe. Miki had been... everything, to him.

The tears would never stop. They would never stop, and she would never come back.

Akihiko could not prevent himself from degenerating to crying for the third time that day. And Shinji, listless, with nothing more to say, lifted again to his feet and left.


	11. Chapter 11

That evening, the children were transported to a nearby empty elementary dorm. It was the closest building available to them before business was sorted out, and it was offered to them by the authority of Iwatodai in a gesture of charity.

Miki's funeral was held several days later. It was more improvised than it was formal, but it was heartfelt. Everyone from the orphanage who was old enough to attend did, and paid their respects to the only one of them that was lost in the fire. Since the ceremony was held at the cleared ruins of the orphanage, from which Miki's body had already been retrieved and buried at the site, Akihiko stayed long after the rest of the group left; both Shinji and Satoru stayed behind with him, saying nothing as the youngest boy poured his heart out in quiet words to the sky above, in front of the home that had been ravaged by the very fire that took Miki. He stayed strong. He didn't cry this time. That didn't mean that it no longer felt like his heart had shattered into a million tiny pieces.

But life moved on, taking Akihiko with it.

School began again that April. It was a new school. New kids. A new start.

Since the orphanage's destruction, everyone at the old Kawatani orphanage had been moved further inland to the closest establishment for children of their kind. At first, the whole thing had been an uproar. The flood of new children meshing with the original inhabitants was a difficult experience; at times, fights broke out between the two, and the orphanage tested with varying degrees of segregation between the two factions. In the end, things smoothed over. Satoru and the other caretakers remained in command over the the children that were originally from Kawatani in Iwatodai, and eventually the two groups learned to coexist, either through tolerance or through newly-forged friendships.

It was too far from the school that the Kawatani children originally attended, and so this coming year would be their first attending the school closest to their new location, full of new students and teachers. A completely new and unfamiliar territory. It wasn't in the best neighborhood, but it upheld the standards enough to provide education.

Nothing that any orphan wasn't used to.

Several weeks had passed already. Akihiko's grief might have been less prominent on the surface, but it still weighed heavily in his heart. He had both lost Miki and wedged himself apart from Shinji, all within the same period of time, and the loss was often too much to bear. But being moved to the new orphanage, Akihiko found himself seeking out Shinji for no reason more than he was the most familiar face in the world of strangers. They were still friends, yes. Deep inside, Akihiko knew he never hated Shinji for what happened. That never manifested to words, and thus it was never spoken to Shinji, but both of them knew that regardless of what happened, they were stuck with each other.

There was nothing about the new school that was all too different from the old one, minus a change in faces and scenery. Akihiko stayed on top of his studies and made grades that were average for any ordinary elementary school student; Shinji did the same. They were in the same class. They ate lunch together. They rode to and from the school on the same train, in adjacent seats. Life was monotonous, just like it had been before. There was one difference, and it was one that would always haunt Akihiko. But slowly, one day at a time, it became easier to look away from the hurt and force himself ahead in life.

The earliest days of June had already passed. Today, Akihiko found himself sitting at lunch, digging through his packed meal like he always did. Shinji was less talkative that day - not that he was much of a talker to begin with, neither of them was - but his younger companion wrote that off as normal, taking a fresh orange from his bag to peel. ...Well, he didn't usually eat oranges, but Shinji kept telling him he needed to eat fruit and vegetables more often, so he thought he'd give it a shot. Oranges weren't so bad.

"Shinji?" He tested across the table. "I... I was thinking about something."

Several chews later, the brunette prompted him. "Yeah?"

"...Well, it's something I've been thinking about for a while." He forced a large part of the rind away with his fingers, exposing the white-filmed skin underneath. "I'm not entirely sure about what I want to do, but I want to take up... something. A sport. I was thinking that if I could get into one, I might be able to get a scholarship for a good school."

Some silence. Shinji picked at his cold plate of rice and pork. "Sounds like a good idea. Making plans for the future," He closed his eyes, thoughtful. "That's... unlike you."

"I-It's sudden, but..." He found himself losing courage in his words. "I just... know that I want to make use of myself. I'm here. I'm alive." His lips quivered, but his voice remained strong, "I want to go back to Iwatodai. I'll transfer to a middle school there, and... if I can, I'll start living in the dorms. I'll make it into a good high school, go to college..."

"Do you have any idea what you want to do?"

"I want to be a police officer." He pried off the final piece of orange peel, and started splitting the fruit into sections. "I want... I want to help people."

Shinji's eyes lowered, distant.

"...I bet you can do it, Aki."

"Hah, thanks," The boy gave a jittery smile to his friend, taking one of the many orange pieces into his mouth and savoring the taste on his tongue until he swallowed. "...I'm still not sure what club I want to join, though. None of the sports seem all that interesting."

"Don't worry, you have a lot of time to think about it."

"I mean, do you have any ideas?" The bell rang to dismiss lunch; Akihiko peeled several sections of orange off in one piece and crammed them into his mouth, making an effort to keep it all in and swallow it in a rush. Shinji, more leisurely, began to rearrange his things back into his backpack. "What about you? Would you join with me?"

The brunette smiled with amusement, pulling his bag onto his shoulder. "What, you need me to hold your hand on the way there, too?"

"H-Hey-!" Offense crossed the fair-maned boy's features as he also stood up from the table to pack. "I was just asking! You don't have to be a jerk about it."

"I don't know. Maybe," Shinji turned, taking on an exhausted look, and the two of them began to walk toward the cafeteria's entrance alongside one another. "It sounds like work. ...But if you get any ideas, run them by me. I'll tell you then."

۞

It was something that Akihiko spent days pondering. He had known for some time now that joining a club, even one that he might not find remarkably interesting, and doing well enough at it to be accepted to a good school, was probably his best bet at a decent education and a strong start to a career. It was weird to think about it in that sense - he was only eleven years old, and many adults, while instilling the importance of education and a choice of career in kids as young as him, often reminded them that they had plenty of time to contemplate it - but focusing on what he wanted to do in life... it helped him look forward. It helped him look away from the loss that would otherwise consume him.

But deciding on the sport he was to join was difficult. None of them really piqued his interest. Would he join one in the end, regardless? Yes. But he would prefer to keep contemplating it until he thought of something he found at least remotely interesting. He wouldn't be able to literally join one until next year when he got into middle school, anyway. Until then, he would keep looking, and hopefully come by something.

A week or two later, he finally discovered his answer.

It was another typical day for him. School had ended, and he had just collected all his things together in his backpack to depart - Shinji some business to take care of before they left, and so stayed behind a little after Akihiko did - when he came across a scuffle between two students on his way to the school gates. He didn't pay it any attention at first. But when the younger of the two students, a female, cried out in pain, in need of help, all of Akihiko's attention was trained on them in an instant. _Miki._

"Stop!" The girl, looking a grade or two younger than Akihiko and her offender, was cowering back and shielding the bruise beneath her eye. "Stop hitting me! Help!"

"Hey!" The fair-maned boy dropped his school bag off where he stood, darting over to intercept the unfolding scene by forcing his way between the two. The other boy, who's eyes were wide with panic, froze in place. "What the hell is your problem? Don't hit her!"

The boy thoughtlessly retaliated, "What're you going to do about it?"

Akihiko kindly answered this question by dislocating the kid's jaw.

He collapsed after this; Akihiko could imagine that no one had ever stood up to this bully before, considering most kids his age were not the type to fight back. And judging by the way the boy started crying not long after, he was probably right. ...He deserved it. Picking on a girl! How could he do something like that?

Akihiko turned from the miserable heap at his feet, his platinum eyes searching for the girl that had been behind him a moment ago. "Are you oka-?"

But she wasn't there. ...Where did she go?

Instead, he saw the familiar form of Shinji treading toward him from the school doors, a set of papers in hand. "Hey, Aki, I just got-" He, too, stopped dead at the sight of the boy, holding his face and sobbing, on the ground. "-what the? What happened to that kid?"

Akihiko puffed with indignance. "He was picking on a girl!"

"I 'idn't hit her! Sh' took my jack't!" The boy sobbed. "Sh' took it 'nd ran away!"

Wait... what? "I saw you just now! She was yelling at you to stop hitting her!"

"B-But I 'idn't!" He sobbed, "Sh' stole it, an'elled at me, an' ran away!"

"O-Oh." It struck him just then how rashly he had jumped into the situation without making sure what was going on. All he had seen was someone hitting a defenseless girl, and he wanted to help; after seeing the many times Miki had been picked on, it was only second nature. ...So that girl stole his jacket? But she was gone!

Great. He tried to help her out, and she ended up being a thief. "I'm sorry..."

Shinji gave him an irritated look. He shrugged helplessly in reply.

"We'll find her. Do you know her name?"

However the boy answered, his words were nearly undecipherable given the state of his jaw. Shinji crouched over in noticing the damage done to his mouth and touched the swollen skin, afterwards shooting a glare up to Akihiko once more. "What did you _do_ to him?"

"I-I just punched him a little..."

The brunette muttered something under his breath that Akihiko could not hear. He prompted the wounded boy again, who finally provided a mangled explanation that no, he didn't know the girl's name, but he knew that she usually hung out behind the school.

"All right. Can you stand up?" Though wounded, the boy nodded and started to sit himself back up, his face slick with tears. Akihiko floundered nearby, clueless and awkward in the situation, until Shinji had sent the boy back off into the school on his own to get some help with his jaw. "He said that she hung out behind the school a lot. Let's go check it out."

Navigating their way through the after-school crowd wasn't too difficult. Most students their age were picked up from the front of the building by their parents, so as long as soon as they broke from that crowd, making their way around the sideroads to the back of the school was a trip uninterrupted by anything more than a couple of chatting friends.

The back of the school, in contrast to the front, was very run-down in appearance, and reeked of a musty scent. The cement sidewalk was taken over by patches of dirt, upturned and kicked onto it by the rain and weather; stepping around the corner to the literal back of the school, up against a fence that separated it from a residential area, there was not even so much as a sidewalk, and both Shinji and Akihiko had to take careful steps to avoid sinking into the rank mud that composed most of the ground. Why would she hang out back here? Either of the boys would have asked if they didn't already know. While it was a bit early to jump to conclusions, it wasn't hard to believe that she might be like them.

"Hello?" Akihiko was the first to call out into the silence. "Is anyone out there?"

Shinji trekked past him without breaking stride, his voice hushed. "Keep your mouth shut. She'll probably run if she hears us."

Akihiko grudgingly obeyed this, following the brunette step for step.

Just as he had guessed, though, they had little luck finding the girl. They had almost walked the entire distance from one end of the back to the other when they both heard something rush behind them. They each looked back just in time to see the same little girl that Akihiko encountered earlier darting from her place between two garbage dumpsters toward the fence that stretched skyward, a good few feet from the back of the school; without giving either of the boys a second glance, she jumped onto the metal, diamond-mesh fence and began to scale it in her rush to escape.

"Wait!" Both of them broke toward her as fast as they could. "Don't run!"

She had no intention of listening to them - but, unfortunately for her, her shoe snagged on one of the unclipped scraps of metal that jutted out from the damaged fence, and by the time she struggled free from it, both of the boys were close enough to catch her.

"Let me go!" She was shivering when they caught hold of her. "I-I'll scream!"

"We don't want to hurt you." Whereas Akihiko made sure she was dropped safely back to the ground on their side of the fence, Shinji grabbed either of her shoulders to hold her still. "We just want to know what you're doing. You shouldn't be back here."

"Sh-Shut up!" She kicked a leg out in an attempt to injure the brunette. "Let me go!"

Akihiko ventured, "Did you steal that kid's jacket before?"

Then, she actually scored a kick against the brunette's shin. "Let me go!"

Swearing, he refused to let her go, but instead clutched harder at her shoulders and jolted her with a quick back-and-forward shaking motion. "Stop being a brat and talk to us!"

If she meant to yell at him again following this, it hiccupped in her throat, and the girl cracked under the urge to begin sobbing. Neither of the boys said anything to interrupt this brief episode; they remained solemnly quiet, while Akihiko took special note of the thick-material jacket that she was wearing. It definitely looked more expensive than the other clothes she had on. ...It had to be that other kid's jacket. He didn't blame her for wanting to steal it, either. The nights around here could get really cold, and if she didn't have anywhere else to sleep, she must have wanted anything that would help keep her warm...

"I'm sorry!" She cried between sniffles. "I didn't mean to make anyone mad...!"

"We're not mad," Shinji was calm in reassuring her. "We just want to talk."

Both of them patiently waited for her to recompose herself. They had wandered back over to the dumpsters and trashbins from before, seating themselves in various positions on whatever objects were available. The girl perched herself on the closed dumpster while Shinji sat beside her, and Akihiko instead took his seat by kicking over one of the empty garbage cans and sitting on it as it lied sideways on the ground.

"You stole that boy's jacket back there, didn't you?"

The girl gave a whimper. "...Yeah."

"You have to know that's wrong. Why did you do it?"

She brought her sleeves up to her eyes, soaking up the tears there. "I... I was cold."

Both boys were quiet for lack of words again. It was Akihiko that spoke up; "You sleep back here behind the school, then, don't you?"

"Y-Yeah." She lowered her head, her hair veiling her eyes. "I bet... you think I'm weird, huh? I bet you want to know why I don't go home after school?"

Both of them shook their heads. No, she was no weirder than they were. But their natural inclination to secrecy about the matter - you didn't just go around telling anybody you were an orphan, people didn't always take kindly to it - prevented them from saying.

"...My daddy hits me." The girl sniffled, shaking her head to scatter the tears that still speckled her face. "Mommy is never home. Neither of them love me. They don't care that I left... they even said so. I never want to go back. But out here I'm cold, and hungry..."

Akihiko stood up, stern-faced. "Does that make it okay to steal?"

"Give her a break, Aki. She needs it more than that other kid does."

"No. She-" He cut himself off awkwardly. "-what's your name?"

"Y-Yuzuki," She kneaded at the fabric of her uniform skirt.

"Yuzuki." The boy placed a fist against his chest, speaking with a sudden conviction. "I know that it's hard to have nothing. You see so many other kids with so many things that you don't have, things that you can never have, because you don't have the money or the means to get them. But that doesn't make stealing right. Maybe you _do_ need it more than that boy does - but if you start to think that it's okay to steal, no matter what the reason, what's left to prevent you from becoming a criminal? You might have to work harder to get the same things that other kids have. And maybe that's not fair. But I think, if you stay strong and do your best to gain those things through honest and trustworthy means, in the end, it makes you that much stronger than everyone else. You'll become a great person instead."

Shinji couldn't withhold a scoff. "Get off your high horse."

The hostility didn't sting him. "You know I'm right, Shinji."

Yuzuki did not speak for some time after Akihiko gave his virtuous lecture; he almost began to think that she wouldn't, until she again parted her pink, chapped lips. "It's not fair. Nothing in life is fair." Her body trembled. "...Momma was right. Being alive is a sin."

But those words... those stung him.

"...I'll try. I... I don't wanna give it back, but... I think you're right, too." The small light-haired female slipped off of the dumpster she had been seated on, bringing her eyes up to meet with the younger of the two boys. She watched him for a long, lingering moment; he blinked and looked down, nervously, unused to the intensity of eye contact.

Looking up to her again when she turned away, he realized how much of him wanted to help her, if only because her likeness reminded him slightly of what he so sorely missed. Was that... wrong? To attach himself to someone if only because it comforted him to protect something on which he projected the image of Miki, who he could no longer keep safe?

"Will you come with me?" She looked from Akihiko to Shinji and back, silently pleading them. Of course, both boys agreed, and they walked at either side of the girl on her way back around to the front of the school to find the boy and return the jacket that she had earlier stolen from him. Was it hard for her? Yes. But before they parted ways, she told them that despite it all, Akihiko had given her a newfound faith in herself.

۞

The next day at lunch, Akihiko and Shinji practiced their usual routine of silence. After yesterday evening's events, neither of them seemed able to find much to say. It wasn't that it had wedged them apart, no - it had just given them a lot to think about. After helping the girl, of course the school authorities had decided to bring Akihiko in for a 'stern talking to' for nailing some kid across the jaw, but what greatly frustrated him about the matter was that they did not give the slightest bit of mind to the explanation he gave for his actions, instead writing them off as those of an unruly child. 'Tell his parents,' they kept muttering amongst one another. So he was inclined to remind them that he didn't have any.

Well, they didn't have much to say about that. Just, 'oh, that must be why.'

It was his second time ever having gotten in trouble before - the first had never been his fault. So he didn't understand; what did his lack of parents have _anything _to do with his trying to protect a girl he thought to be innocent? He had heard the same nonsensical excuse back then, too. In the end, he told them whatever they wanted to hear so that he was released, but left the office practically boiling with anger over the matter. They didn't know anything! He would have done the same thing even if he _had_ parents!

But this, along with similar instances in being discriminated against by his fellow students, only added to his insecurity. Did being an orphan really make him so different...?

He had pushed the thought away by now - the most he could, anyway. He spoke his mind just to initiate conversation. "...How do you think Yuzuki is doing?"

"I don't know," was Shinji's honest reply. "She never promised to go to the orphanage. But... whatever she decides, I hope things work out for her."

Some silence. Akihiko didn't have much of an appetite. "...Yeah. Me too."

He could tell Shinji didn't have much of one, either. But despite that, the brunette was always one of those people who took their health seriously, and so forced down every bite. "Hey. Have you decided what club you're going to join?"

Akihiko ripped open the milk carton he had sitting on the edge of the table. "Club?"

"You know, like, a sport. You were telling me about it earlier this month."

"Oh, right. ...No, I still don't have any idea."

The brunette perked up, pointing his fork to his friend. "Why don't you try boxing?"

Boxing? The sport had never even come to mind, considering how it wasn't exactly mainstream. Most kids were always discussing baseball, or basketball, maybe soccer. But boxing? ...You know, thinking about it, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. Taking on boxing would teach him how to fight. If he learned how to fight, he could protect people...

Immediately, the idea greatly appealed to him. He couldn't stop the smile from curling the edges of his lips. "You know, that's a good idea, Shinji. I think I'll do that."

The brunette nodded as if satisfied with himself. "You'd be pretty good at it."

Akihiko's curiosity sparked. "What gave you that idea?"

"Yesterday, you nailed that guy across the face pretty hard."

"Oh." The boy shrugged nonchalantly, though he could not prevent the undertone of blush from coloring his face at a mixture of embarrassment and pride in himself. "W-Well, it was nothing. I'm sure anyone could have done it."

"Too bad the kid was innocent, and you just ended up looking like an ass."

Akihiko made a face across the table.

"Anyway, it reminded me of that time that you bloodied my nose for stealing that doll from the toy store. You always had a mean punch. So, I thought, why not try making use of a talent you already have?" He shrugged, taking another bite from the food on his plate. "You don't have to do it or nothing. But if you do, you know, good luck to you."

He was starting to struggle to resist showing his mounting excitement. Boxing sounded perfect for him! And if he was good enough at it, he really would have a chance at getting into good schools! "Will you help me practice?"

But Shinji always knew the quickest way to kill his moods. "...Not my thing."

"Shinji! Why do you have to be like that? If you joined with me, I bet you'd get all of the same scholarships I would! Everything would work out great!"

"So we can grow up and be police officers together?" One of those bitter smiles returned to his face. "Aki... you're a great kid, you know? You'll grow up and do great things, and help a lot of people on the way. You don't always have your head on straight, but people like you anyway. You have a good heart. You'll be successful. And you deserve to be."

The brunette slowly shook his head, his eyes returning to his plate. "I... don't."

"...What do you mean by that?"

"I'm just... not like you. I fuck stuff up. You'd be better off on your own."

The tension in the silence that followed was thick enough to cut with a knife. But even so, Akihiko gave his following actions no second thought, slamming his fork back onto the table with a clink. "That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard come out of your mouth." When the brunette looked up, the younger of the two met his eyes with unmatched resolve. "It's because of you that I even _have _a life to do something with, Shinji. Back when the fire happened... I didn't think I would ever forgive you for what you did. But I realized - no, I always knew, I think - that you... you were just as much a victim as the rest of us. I was just so angry, so lost, that I didn't know how to control what I was feeling." He took a labored breath before he went on, "Later, I realized just how grateful I should be for having a friend that refused to let me throw my life away. I know Miki wouldn't have wanted me to die, too. She would have wanted me to make something of myself, and be happy with what I had..."

The underlying emotion that so often plagued him began to bleed into his voice, but he kept himself level-headed, never wavering his eyes from Shinji's. "I want to do all of this not just for me and Miki, but because of what you did for me, too. And if you won't go, then neither will I. I'm not leaving you behind."

When all was said, Akihiko reached a hand forward.

"So, what is it going to be? Are you in this with me, or not?"

_Heh. Always so stubborn. _Shinji lowered his eyes. But he smiled, too. "...Yeah." He reached over to hold a strong grip on the hand his friend extended to him. "Someone's gotta keep you in line. I guess that's my job, whether I like it or not, eh?"

Akihiko couldn't contain his giddiness. "Does this mean you'll join boxing with me?"

Shinji pretended to think for a minute. "No."

"Wha- why not?"

"Because I'd kick your ass."

"Oh yeah?" At the goading remark, Akihiko stood and veered around the table.

"Hey, dude, watch it! I was just kidding!"

۞

_"Me, you, and Miki... we used to run around here until the sun went down._

_ Back then, it was like we had all the time in the world."_

**_fin_**


End file.
